Weimerica – Page 10 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

34 Signposts On The Way To Civil War . . .

“Who else is on the list?” – The Godfather

Terrorists really help with self-esteem issues. They keep telling their new recruits, “You’re the bomb.”

The devolution of the United States was predicted by Thomas Chittum in his book Civil War Two, The Coming Breakup of America. Although you can find it for free online, I strongly encourage you to purchase it from Amazon®, since Mr. Chittum does get the money from this and has been using it to get families out of South Africa.

Towards the back of the book, Mr. Chittum provides the Civil War II Checklist, a list of 36 items “in no particular order” that he sees as measurements along the way to Civil War 2.0. He wrote the book originally in 1997, and updated it in 2007, so we’ll be marking close to two decades of time between his last update and this quick analysis.

Item 1: Every time you see a blank for your ethnic group on a form, think Civil War II.

Recent Supreme Court rulings as well as President Trump’s removal of DEI at the federal level have taken us back from the peak, but I believe many federal DEI organizations are still there, just under different names. Regardless, it’s a part of our culture now. Check.

Santa never pays for parking – it’s always on the house.

Item 2: If illegal aliens are allowed to vote, even in local elections, it will be another unmistakable signal that American citizenship, and therefore America itself, is finished.

California, Maryland, and Vermont allow this. Check.

Item 3: The abolition of the right to bear arms.

This is one area where we’ve made great strides since Mr. Chittum wrote his book. Gun rights are at the best condition that they’ve been during my entire lifetime. This is the power of a group keeping after it year after year.

Item 4: Watch for racially split juries.

We are here. Multiple cases of black criminals walking free despite clear proof of guilt of them killing white people exist. Check.

Item 5: Watch for the military to assume police duties.

I have to give this a “not yet” since the National Guard and Marines were in an unarmed force protection role in Los Angeles.

Item 6: Watch for the establishment of an elite military force outside the chain of command of the regular military to serve as an internal counterinsurgency force.

Not seen, unless I missed this or the Ghostbusters™ count.

I hear the Ghostbusters™ didn’t wear unusual socks, just a pair of normal socks.

Item 7: Watch for Washington D.C. to increasingly resemble the capital of some banana republic under siege by revolutionaries and mobs.

I’m going to give this a check as the periodic riot fences go up. Check.

Item 8: Resegregation: Watch for Africans and other minorities demanding, and often getting, separate facilities for themselves, another clear sign that they’re continuing to reject co-option.

Absolutely. From graduation ceremonies to student unions to “safe spaces” this is common even though they still claim a Constitutional right to be around white people. Check.

Item 9: Watch for further replacement of individual rights by group rights, group rights based on ethnic group.

This had been well underway, and is likely only slightly impeded by the Trump administration. Check.

Item 10: Watch for non-governmental organizations acquiring military power.

Outside of Blackwater™ or whatever Erik Prince is up to, I don’t see this as significant.

Item 11: Watch for real political power to continue to shift from our elected officials to the courts, and thus away from the American people.

Check. Check. Check. The courts in the United States are fundamentally a liberal institution, and are acting as a one-way rachet – the GloboLeft can do anything, but TradRight can’t change it a bit. Check.

A hamburger walked into a bar buy they wouldn’t give him a beer. They don’t serve food.

Item 12: Watch for more instances of real political power flowing from American institutions to international bodies, thus again flowing away from American citizens.

There has been some of this, especially with the drive to worship Climate Change, and the drive has been to create these not as treaties, but as international “agreements” that don’t require ratification. Check.

Item 13: Watch for minorities and radical whites to continue to seize control of American institutions.

Check.

Item 14: Watch for secessionist movements and other movements seeking autonomy on American soil.

I’ve seen several of these show up on the TradRight, very few on the GloboLeft because they cannot accept the idea of people opting out of their delusions. Besides, the biggest sign of an impending divorce is Mom and Dad talking about it. Check.

Item 15: Watch for race-based political parties, a sure sign of racial polarization.

Trump won 42% of the Hispanic vote, so not quite there yet. Only 16% of blacks voted for Trump, and if that was the only group we’d call it. Verdict: not yet.

Item 16: Watch for the emergence of “no-go” areas for the police in our cities, areas abandoned by the police and left to the control of street gangs.

There are plenty of these in the United States, and even more in the summer during riot season. Check.

Item 17: Watch for a so-called slave tax refund or some similar vehicle that will automatically subsidize all blacks for life.

This has not happened.

The Vatican doesn’t take them though, it’s a PayPal™ state.

Item 18: Watch for court orders and other schemes mandating more voting districts in which blacks are intentionally a majority.

This has 100% happened in Alabama. Check.

Item 19: Watch other multiethnic empires for ethnic violence, a general loss of democracy, increasing poverty, waves of refugees, and their actual breakup in ethnic warfare. South Africa, Russia, Turkey, the Balkan countries, Brazil, all of black Africa, Mexico, Guatemala, India, Pakistan and Peru are all multiethnic empires to some extent.

Mixed bag, but I’ll give it a check as the waves of refugees and poverty are evident in many of these. Check.

Item 20: Watch for the spread of walled suburbs, euphemistically labeled as gated communities.

This continues. Check.

Item 21: Watch for more mind control hoaxes by the establishment media.

This references the fake and contrived news. Absolutely this is happening. Check.

What does Willy call an economic depression? An everlasting jobstopper.

Item 22: Watch for an increasing percentage of minorities in our military, the use of foreigners in our military, the use of UN troops on our soil, or even the establishment of an American Foreign Legion.

This is partially true, but UN will likely never happen. I’m still giving it a check. Check.

Item 23: Watch for more out of court settlements in cases of alleged racial discrimination.

I think most of these are out of court or are administratively done at this point. Check.

Item 24: Watch for more restrictions on freedom of speech by the government and the establishment media.

This has happened, especially on the Internet. If not for Musk’s purchase of Twitter™ this would have been complete, reducing actual free speech to a vanishingly small number of sites. Check.

Item 25: Watch for police to increasingly abandon their traditional uniforms for ones that resemble military and secret police uniforms in their dark color or camouflage, military helmets, opaque face shields, and absence of name tags.

Barney and Sheriff Taylor are gone. Check.

When the military becomes the police, citizens become the enemy.

Item 26: Watch for clandestine groups of white officers to form within our federal, state and local police – groups similar to the Resistors in the Green Berets.

I have no idea. Clandestine, right?

Item 27: Watch for an arm of the federal government charged with promoting racist affirmative action, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to acquire agents that carry guns and have the power to make arrests.

Nope.

Item 28: Watch for the collapse of the US dollar as the world’s premier currency.

In progress, but still the world’s main cash, so not yet.

Item 29: Watch for growing geographic segregation and its increasing mention in the establishment press.

I’ve seen dozens of articles about just this happening and that Idaho is full and that California plates on a car are like a kick-me sign on the back of the class idiot. Check.

Item 30: Watch for signs that the global military equation and American dominance in it are being challenged.

Not yet. We’ll see.

I wonder if they’ll wear plaid?

Item 31: Watch for the breakup of Canada. If Canada does break up along ethnic and linguistic lines, it will bode ill for its neighbor which is an even worse multiethnic and multilingual mishmash.

I’m calling this one a “never will” as Canada has self-immolated with unending waves of third-world immigrants destroying the place. Item Removed.

Item 32: Watch for an increased flow of Americans immigrating to Canada.

It’s up, not by much, and why would you move to Mumbai on the Arctic Ocean? Item Removed.

Item 33: Watch for political and legal organizations formed along ethnic lines that will parallel, and ultimately displace their official rivals. For instance, watch for organizations with names like The Association of Hispanic States, or the Black Mayors Conference.

There are plenty of these. Check.

Item 34: Watch for more help wanted ads stating that job applicants must be bilingual.

Check.

Item 35: Watch for indications that the UN is assuming the role of a world government, and that the US is losing even more of its national sovereignty to the UN.

No. The UN is weaker now than at any time in history. We have, however, lost a lot to international treaty organizations and corporations.

Item 36: Watch for a certain picture. We’ve all seen this picture countless times before, a picture from Beirut, Budapest, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Yugoslavia, Somalia – a burnt-out tank, perhaps the charred corpse of a crewman protruding through a hatch, and jubilant rebels posing atop the tank waving assault rifles and a flag. Someday we shall see this picture in our newspapers yet again, and this time taken on American soil. The tank, the dead crewman, and rebels will all be Americans, all will be American except the flag, which will be a Mexican, Aztlan, New Africa, or Confederate flag. When we see this picture, it will be too late. Civil War II will be upon us. But there’s another picture we’ll see first, again one we’ve all seen before from some unfortunate land. But this time it will be taken right here in the US of A – a picture of a dirty, ragged child foraging for food in a garbage dump.

I’ll leave number 36 up to you. Here’s my nominee photo.

Summarizing that, my count is that there are twenty or twenty-one landmarks complete out of the total thirty-four landmarks on the way to Civil War 2.0. I think that in no way do all thirty-four have to be checked for war to be here – it’s just a barometer.

What’s your score?

The Three Horsemen and One Bikini of the Apocalypse

“Apocalypse cow? Apocalypse wow!” – The Tick (2001)

I love this joke like there’s no tomorrow.

I. Job Replacement.
The Multicultural West.
The Fiat Financial House of Cards.
Sydney Sweeny’s bikini.

Each of these, if dealt with on its own, presents a danger as great as being between Gavin Newsom and a camera. But it is likely something we could work through as a country peacefully. Heck, maybe even two of the three, though that’s difficult, and history has the receipts:

For example, when the United States was a nation, we worked through the Great Depression. The Great Depression was likely brought about at the fundamental level from the transformation of the nation from an agrarian society driven by horsepower to a manufacturing colossus driven by iron, steam, and electricity. Sort of if A.I. were cars and assembly line production, but covered in tasty Radium®.

If a radioactive spider makes Spiderman®, would a radioactive dog create Doberman®?

Of course there was a finance side of the Great Depression. It was egged on by a stock market mania, margin credit, and the optimism brought about by new technology. Stocks never go down, right? That creates a bumpy road for a bit. But, as we were a singular people, we got through it.

I mean, the single bloodiest war in human history counted as a bit of a bumpy road, right?

We also dealt with multi-cultural forces in America in our history.

First, the founders only allowed in Western Europeans,
Second by fighting, defeating, and corralling Indians (some of them are still sore about this),
And, finally, by blocking out many non-Western Europeans with the Immigration Act of 1924 since we already had the recipes for all their good food.

1924 was when we as a nation realized that we were getting too much “diversity” too quickly and saw that certain groups of foreigners couldn’t or wouldn’t assimilate and never be Americans. We dealt with that in a calm manner and got picky and sorted diversity like a bouncer at a cartel nightclub. We maintained (for a time) the basic ethnic makeup of the United States – we didn’t throw them out, but we made sure we’d outnumber them.

I wonder if he and his siblings were born apart?

We dealt with fiat currency in the wake of the Revolutionary War victory when the phrase “isn’t worth a Continental” referred to the money printing excesses that led to the Constitutional Convention and the Constitutional clause of “No state shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make any thing but cold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.” The nation survived, though it did end up changing our form of government entirely.

Lincoln floated fake cash during the Civil War to pay for it, and that could arguably be said to have started “The Long Depression” – a hangover period from 1873-1896 as we vomited out all of that fiat money. The Long Depression was also exacerbated by the transition of the American manufacturing from craftsmen to big factories.

The establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank™ followed by Nixon ignoring the clear intent of that clause in 1971 led to the crack-up we see today. Money, gold and silver, has been replaced by cash which is too expensive to print – we can just use ones and zeroes.

I’ve written about all of these three separately, and for the most part, we as a nation were able to make it through, but it’s important that we realize that we’re dealing with all three of these leading to a crisis right now when we are observably no longer a nation.

The ICE agent in Los Angeles needs National Guard and Marine protection for their anxiety, I heard on the news. Something about his panic attacks.

The first is A.I. It has already been a steamroller that has eliminated tens of thousands of jobs. I would expect that soon enough it will be hundreds of thousands. Recently, I called up my bank to do some banking. The transaction wasn’t unique, it probably happens thousands of times a day. The person I was talking to, “Mitch” had a perfect Midwestern accent. What tipped me off was that “Mitch” didn’t connect the reason for the error to the resolution. “Mitch” transferred me to “Anna” because he wasn’t authorized to grant a request.

“Anna” had, of course, the thickest Indian accent – the kind that is so poorly pronounced that it is nearly unintelligible if fast. Her actual name was probably something like Ananneedanothasylabble-Ganish-Prajeeta. At that moment that the smart Midwestern dude transfers the call to a barely verbal woman in Ramamamadingpoopabad, I realized that Mitch was an A.I.

As an anon mentioned on my last post on A.I., “Think about all of the Indian scammers out there today . . . Now think about what happens if AI wipes out most of the call center and coding jobs causing most of India’s 1.3 billion people to be out of work. It’s going to get ugly.” He had a point. A.I. is going to make it too expensive to pay Indians pennies a day just to steal money from old ladies. This is India’s worst nightmare.

I always wondered how you got down from an elephant, then Pa Wilder told me that you get down from a goose.

This scenario requires no Artificial Superintelligence. This requires only the application of existing capabilities. Said differently: ChatGPT 4.0® already has an I.Q. greater than three-quarters of the Subcontinent.

This has implications, but match it with the house of cards that is the world financial system. That thing was already strained tighter than Syndey Sweeney’s bikini holding in the all the printed money flooding in from the United States and the world. A country like India, unable to feed all the Indians, will collapse. No jobs. No prospects of jobs.

Though the research for tonight was fun.

But it will be, perhaps, worst in the West. On top of the economic dislocation of the A.I. Revolution, on top of the piles of fake money, we are not even a people.

The latest riots in L.A. have proven that out. Most of the “immigrants” that have come to “enrich” us have actually come to replace us. That’s their goal. You can watch on the news the Pakistanis fighting the Indians over which of them has the best claim to London. You can watch young men of military age strutting in Los Angeles with the flags of foreign countries like a U.N. parade, but somehow worse. You can read posts on X® or even Reddit©: they are not here to assimilate – they are here to conquer and take over.

This adds the final layer of instability required to ensure that the United States and the whole of the West is facing the direst crisis since the threats to Europe that were ended at the Battle of Tours in 732, or the Battle of Vienna in 1683.

This level of crisis is graver than any the West has faced in over 340 years, if not greater. Whatever comes out of this will be different.

Thankfully, we still have all the tasty Radium™ you can eat!

The Los Angeles Riots: You’re Paying For Them

“Los Angeles Island is no longer part of the United States and becomes the deportation point for all people found undesirable or unfit to live in the new, moral America.” – Escape from L.A.

The border should cost more than NASA’s budget – there are way more aliens in Mexico. (Most memes as-found)

It started with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) doing their job. Of course, they’d ignored it for the last few years, but I won’t blame them.

As the weather began to warm up, it began to be riot season again. The rationale for the GloboLeft is simple: anything is justified to thwart Trump. “By any means necessary™” is even one of their phrases, unlike the phrase, “Why should government pay for that???”

The silliest error that the GloboLeft has made with this particular series of riots is that they used the flags of foreign countries in their protests. To heritage Americans (like many readers of this post), this was radicalizing. The picture above of the fine young gentleman with his mask, tats, and skull pants standing shirtless on top of a totaled car with flames and smoke as his backdrop just resulted in the number of Americans who want to deport him tripling.

What a world where Corporate Conservatives™ are spouting the talking points of the Trad Right?

A growing number of Americans now want to deport all illegals, and never let them back in. I think their reservoir of sympathy went up on smoke along with the American flags that they were burning.

This edit of Stonetoss® is particularly well done and should be spread far and wide.

It is now becoming clear to people who would have never imagined it: the goal is absolutely to replace Americans with a more compliant group who will work long hours and not complain. Unless, of course, you try to ship them back to the country they came from.

Is being an illegal like being a Bill Cosby fan? You think he’s great in theory, but you wouldn’t want to hang out with him.

The president of the Mexican Senate has even made the comment he’d be fine with Mexico paying for a border wall, they just want the borders of Mexico to be at the pre-1830 map of Mexico.

Remember, the United States conquered the entire country of Mexico in 1848 and didn’t want the parts where the Mexicans lived – the number of actual Mexican citizens in the parts we took were almost non-existent. The United States also paid money to Mexico for the land. Now, to be fair, they didn’t have a lot of choice, but they still took the cash.

The most amazing thing is that there is a group of Mexicans who aren’t in the cartels that think they have some authority.

Now in my mind, this isn’t a formal declaration of war, but it is a clear declaration of hostility, and the United States should treat all foreign citizens of military age (10+) illegally in the country as irregular combatants, and treat them as such. And any naturalized citizen caught at a riot has two choices: they can be tried for treason, or they can be stripped of their citizenship and given a ticket home, along with a hefty prison sentence if they ever return.

Not you, Dora! You can go explora the city of Aurora in southern Brazil. Or face 10-20 years in prison.

The consequences of ignoring the tens of millions of illegals, possibly 40 million, in this country can be avoided only for so long. But it does bear mentioning just who is paying for all of this.

You. Your tax dollars have paid for:

Relocation expenses for illegals.
Plane flights for illegals.
Housing for illegals.
Food for illegals.
Medical care for illegals to pump out anchor babies.
Schools for illegals.
Cops to arrest illegals.
Higher insurance premiums because of illegal drunk drivers.
“Charity” groups to drive illegals through Mexico.
And so much more.

But your tax dollars also paid for the riots.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA, EIN 95-4421521) received $34 million from federal tax funding according to Data Republican’s database (LINK), and according to Martin Armstrong and other sources, CHIRLA played a role in mobilizing the mess in L.A. Repeat this across the country. Your tax dollars are going to fund all of this.

But, hey, you got slightly less expensive strawberries and Tyson™ made great profits in the second quarter of 2010, so who cares if the actual illegal costs hundreds of thousands more than they contribute to the country? We can make that up on volume, right?

Is this guy a garden-variety traitor, or is he a leader, you know, an Orchestraitor?

The point is that there is nothing, absolutely nothing organic about these protests. What you are seeing, perhaps, is a Fort Sumpter moment, bought and paid for by . . . you.

The irony is not lost on saner members of the GloboLeftElite. The Democrat’s own Uncle Fester John Festerman has called it:

What do you call a Democrat with an I.Q. of 75? Senator.

And their hypocrisy knows no bounds, as illustrated by Stonetoss:

The really hilarious part is when someone finally pointed out the horrible optics of carrying around flags from another country, their post was banned.

And when the Democratic operatives started handing American flags out so the protesters looked less like an invading army, the protesters did the obvious, because they hate America:

As usual, the Bee® has a wonderful take:

But never forget the real roadmap:

And the only possible conclusion that stops us short of complete civil breakdown:

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Moving The Overton Window

“It’s all so tiresome.” – Empire of Dust

I have a belt with several clocks on it. It’s a waist of time.

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

Volume VII, Issue 1

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”. I moved the Clock O’Doom to 8., given the events in Los Angeles. As I predicted, the GloboLeft would likely try to turn up the heat as things warmed up. Racial tension is exceptionally high now, and can lead to violence in a heartbeat. Beware: it can climb quickly. Right now (as of publishing) we are at Level Rittenhouse. Soon, we might be at Level Rooftop Korean.

My 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 – Moving The Overton Window – Violence and Censorship Update – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Collapse Of The Left – 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 850 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Moving The Overton Window

The Overton Window is a theoretical description of the range of ideas that can be discussed in polite society. For instance, if you were an American in 1940, having discussions of men playing woman’s sports would have been unacceptable. The discussion of a second American Civil War has long been deemed unacceptable due to it being outside the Overton Window, but now it’s viewed by many as inevitable and the Window has moved to include that.

Another movement of The Overton Window took place in May. Perhaps the biggest Civil War 2.0 news took place when Shiloh Hendrix said Schrödinger’s word – a word that is so devastatingly emotional that it cannot be uttered around a fragile group, and yet so common in music and everyday parlance of that fragile group that it is, for some, used in every sentence.

Ms. Hendrix didn’t play by the rules. The rules are that she was supposed to apologize. At that point, the GloboLeft can surround her and demand punishment for violation of their narrative. Instead, Shiloh, realizing she’d have to move and protect her family, put of a fundraiser and made hundreds of thousands of dollars from thousands of donors. She didn’t explode. Her life wasn’t ended. And that moved the Window.

My belief is this is part of the reaction to the tiresome numbers of stories and videos of black people behaving badly, in many cases extremely badly. These videos had that effect, perhaps because they were combined with a criminal justice system that has been perverted to the point where Ms. Hendrix was under investigation for “something” but actual rapists get probation.

The system is broken. People are noticing.

Violence and Censorship Update

I sometimes post descriptions of the events occurring in other countries so you can see what’s planned for you. Let’s go to Germany this month:

The Mainstream Media tried to lie and say that white people aren’t under a genocidal attack in South Africa. I wonder why that would be?

But let’s not forget that the GloboLeft have a goal for Trump, by any means necessary:

But not a parody Arby’s™ site:

Another parody, I believe:

Misery Index

I’ve started it for the new Trump administration, shown in red. Early results are much better than Biden’s misery numbers.

But house prices have hit a peak. Wonder why?

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 indicators in are flat this month. The L.A. riots will factor in next month’s report.

I guess it’s a bloodbath when you can’t have someone else’s money.

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it shot down in May, but June will be another story.

Economic:

The economy is up a bit this month, as I expected last month. Next month? Probably will look down a bit.

$50 a month? Yikes. I guess the word “cheap” comes to mind.

Illegal Aliens:

Still the lowest level since the Weather Report started.

The Collapse Of The Left

The organized face of the GloboLeftElite is collapsing. The reason is that they have chained themselves to the opposites of Truth, Beauty, and Good. Probably because if Trump said he loved air, they’d hold their breath until they passed out. Anyway, let’s look at some examples:

Note the highlighted text. This, according to the GloboLeftists at ARTnews™, is really good art. I would actually share that if someone told me that a third grader had done this, since this is clearly fifth-grade level work. The only problem is that the “artist” was 33 or so when she drew this. The worldview of the GloboLeft is so ugly they have to call ugly things beautiful.

If this is the best that the GloboLeft has, their supporters should weep. There are zero people on the GloboLeft that appear to be serious in any fashion at this point. Don’t laugh, but AOC is likely to run in 2028 – it’s that bad.

The GloboLeft celebrates weakness and perversion. They’ve gone a long way to making traditional values cool again with the young men of the societies they’ve destroyed. Certainly, the young women have fallen under the GloboLeft spell, but, like always, they will end up conforming to the ideology of the strong man they really wish to be with. The future belongs to strong young men.

LINKS

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

BAD GUYS

https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1929700468428886144
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14688153/midwest-city-downtown-locals-scared-mad-max.html
https://www.dailywire.com/news/colorado-springs-mayor-mobolade-implicated-hate-crime-hoax-bernard-conviction

GOOD GUY

https://x.com/RedPillSayian/status/1919826701149696428

ONE GUY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuxINiw2smI

BODY COUNT

https://archive.is/1FvKK
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image_92%2814%29.jpg?itok=BZ47Jwk3
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-drug-overdose-deaths-fall-nearly-27-percent-lowest-level-5-years
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2025/05/16/if_abortion_is_healthcare_why_is_abortion_data_going_unreported_152797.html

VOTE COUNT

https://www.cpr.org/2025/05/05/former-postal-worker-admits-stealing-ballots/
https://thefederalist.com/2025/05/28/doj-sues-nc-elections-board-for-registering-voters-without-proper-id/
https://archive.is/2025.05.07-190200/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/07/us/politics/texas-vote-fraud.html
https://dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2025/05/23/harry-roth-ranked-choice-voting-leads-to-worse-leadership/

CIVIL WAR – OVER HERE

https://www.military.com/off-duty/games/2025/05/09/alternate-history-channel-reddit-gaming-out-shockingly-realistic-second-us-civil-war.html
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/black-fatigue-goes-viral-everyone-including-blacks-are-tired-ghetto-behavior
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/05/abundance-democrats-political-power/682929/
https://www.foxnews.com/media/gingrich-warns-very-profound-cultural-civil-war-underway-says-democrats-doubling-down-weird-values

CIVIL WAR – OVER THERE

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/opinion/europe-civil-war.html
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/civil-war-cant-happen-in-europe-or-can-it/
https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/civil-war-comes-to-the-west-part-ii-strategic-realities/
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/05/12/is-britain-on-the-brink-of-civil-war/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-14776813/France-brink-scale-civil-war-Ive-lived-25-years-locals-violence-caused-hordes-destructive-youths-state-lost-control-fear-whats-coming-JONATHAN-MILLER.html

Watch The Economy Stagflate, Complete With Unrelated Bikini Picture

“We, the people, suffered. We still suffer from unemployment, inflation, crime and corruption.” – Taxi Driver

When I buy groceries for prepping, The Mrs. says I have stock home syndrome.

Back in the bad (economically) old days of the 1970s, a word came into existence that described the economic policy of the Carter Administration: Stagflation.

Now, if this would have been about massive helium-filled deer antlers, it would have been great. Surreal, but great. But it wasn’t. Instead, it was surreal but bad –the economy was stagnant, but the price of everything kept going up. It was like going to the dentist because of a toothache and finding out that instead of anesthetic you just got pepper spray in your eyes to take your mind off the dental surgery.

But back to surreal. The impacts of stagflation were likewise as surreal as the giraffe clock currently melting in my light socket. Here’s an example: I remember when I was first married to The Mrs., we would go and visit her parents and spend the weekend in her old bedroom. In one part of the closet was a dust-covered box filled with toys from when The Mrs. was a very young The Miss.

Is a prog rock band that plays Spanish guitar on your front lawn called Pink Flamenco?

One toy in particular stood out – it was a cheap plastic injection-molded car. It still had the grocery store price sticker on it – and it was something like $8.99.

Whoa! Back in the late 1990s, $8.99 would have bought something like a dozen similar cheap plastic injection-molded cars. Inflation had been out of control in the late 1970s when The Mrs. had been given that toy.

Everything sucked economically – crappy quality at inflated prices.

Two major factors led to that situation – Nixon pulling the United States off the gold standard was the most critical one. If we had to prove-up our spending with gold, well, we’d have to have some sort of discipline or we wouldn’t have any gold.

Discipline sounds like it’s boring, and the 1970s was made for disco parties, drugs, and infidelity, so why have discipline with our money? That’s just not cool, man. Besides, who needs rules when you have bitchin’ bell bottoms?

I guess weightlifters in the 1970s wore barbell bottoms.

The other situation is that the United States had reached a (then) peak in oil production, and was now dependent upon oil supplies from foreign nations (they were nations instead of countries back then – now, not so much). Since one group of foreigners (Arabs) didn’t like another group of foreigners (Israelis) the group that had all the oil (Arabs) decided to stop selling so much oil.

Oil is a big deal, because the price of oil is hidden almost everywhere in our economy. It’s required for planes to move bikini models, for trucks to move PEZ™, and in some places heats homes. So, increasing the price of oil was just like tossing a big tax on everything, so moms everywhere went to work to bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and then wear crappy perfume and nylon pantsuits.

I think I just gave the origin story of Hamburger Helper™, but I digress.

Not everyone makes great meatloaf, but two out of three ain’t bad.

What does this mean to today’s problem? Are we in the same place?

Partially.

We’ve been partying, mostly, since the 1970s, and have gotten away with it through various shenanigans. As Ayn Rand said, “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.” I’ll just shrug and Ayn was talking about her polyamorous relationships, but I can’t be sure.

Regardless, 2025 is a big year for dealing with consequences. Our current national debt is something like $33 trillion. I know, it’s like Whoopi Goldberg’s butt, it’s so big it’s meaningless. But we have to refinance $9 trillion of that $33 trillion plus another $3 trillion that we’re spending that we don’t have, this year.

I mean, who is going to buy all that debt?

Don’t know. Probably not China. Or Canada. Or Mexico.

Let’s think about where that debt is now. The Federal Reserve® already owns about $5 trillion, and it’s not like they have a choice, so they’re probably in for several trillion. But the biggest holder of the national debt is . . . the government. It owes itself $7 trillion dollars.

The rocks are still worth more.

Yes, you read that right. Big chunks of that are Social Security “trust fund” that’s stuck in Al Gore’s “lock box”. I mean, seriously, what do people not understand about a lock box? But it also includes things like DOD retirement, and civil service retirement (which is over a trillion dollars). And you know we’re spending down that Social Security trust fund right now, so that just means more debt that someone else will have to buy.

It’ll be the Fed©, snapping up debt like it’s at a Black Friday sale on silicon oven-mitts on TEMU™.

A trillion here, a trillion there, and soon enough we’re talking about real money.

The way debt bonds are sold is that people bid on ‘em at an auction. What are people bidding? The interest rate. So if there’s a huge supply and lower demand, what goes up?

The interest rate.

Since we’re not paying the bills out of cash, but out of borrowed money, that means the interest paid will just go onto the debt as it’s paid, which means that even more bonds will need to be sold. That means that there will be more supply and . . . higher interest rates.

It’s a vicious circle, but one that works as long as the economy keeps growing.

But the economy likely didn’t grow last quarter, so we’re (at least right now) stagnant.

Oddly, the tariffs and deportations seem to have broken something and right now we have the lowest inflation in the last four years. I don’t think that will last. Higher interest rates will bleed into businesses, and money for expansion or even day-to-day operational expenses.

How odd that people whine and complain when you make them go live in a country they made, surrounded by people who speak the same language that they do.

These higher interest rates will also make trillions of bank assets (my mortgage, for instance) worth less. My mortgage is at an interest rate lower than I can get with a deposit a savings account. I assure you my bank is aware of that and loves it when I toss them my monthly check. This is what led to the Silicon Valley Bank® implosion – it had too many dollars tied up in low interest loans and securities, and then rates went up.

Thankfully, the Fed® made the decision that the banks can ignore the fact that their assets are worth less, or else all of them would have self-extinguished. And you wonder why gold is selling at $3,300 an ounce?

Why do I predict the high likelihood of Civil War 2.0 by 2032? Because by then, if you do the math, you’ll see that just interest on the debt will be at least half of the total tax hauled in, but I think it will be worse, because the numbers always are worse.

The solution to this won’t be a business-as-usual solution, and there will be extreme economic dislocations. There is no evidence of anyone wanting to increase our economy at the China-like rates we’d need to outrun this mess, and no appetite to cut the cost of government. At some point the consequences of ignoring reality will become so manifest that they aren’t something we can ignore.

And it runs on beetle juice.

Well, the good news is that we probably won’t see $8.99 injection molded plastic toy cars. The bad news is that they’re already selling the one in the picture above for $10.00.

How Society Shapes Humanity

“Don’t worry, scrote. There are plenty of ‘tards out there living really kick-ass lives. My first wife was ‘tarded. She’s a pilot now.” – Idiocracy

Apple® has embraced the future: they’ve already priced in 20 years of inflation.

One constant theme of this blog is change.

We live in a world that is defined by change, and the benchmarks we measure society are things like change in GDP, change in population, change in the availability of different PEZ™ flavors.

Blue is a flavor, right?

The focus of humanity on change is not the norm, but rather an exception. The amount of novel situations and technology entering our lives is at an all-time high and is increasing year-over-year.

Let’s backtrack a bit and put this in perspective.

Going back to food, 15,000 years ago we ate a lot of meat and fish, some rando fruits and vegetables that some cave-bro had been brave enough to taste and not die, and nuts.

Nothing about society would change for 15,000-year-ago bro’s tribe for thousands of years.

There are people who maintain that the human organism hasn’t changed enough so that our very different diet of sugar, grains, sugar, industrial chemicals, sugar, minerals from a mine in Bulgaria, sugar, beef jerky, and microplastics isn’t somehow normal and that our bodies haven’t adapted to it.

Maybe they have a point?

Why can’t Elvis drive a Cadillac™ in reverse? He’s dead.

Anyway, this isn’t so much about feeding your head as it is about feeding your mind with the change in the way we deal with information.

How has that changed humanity?

In the beginning was the Word. And, the word.

If you couldn’t speak it, chances of getting your genes propagated were slim because if you can’t talk your grubby cave-gal out of her wolfskin jeans, your genes aren’t gonna be around for the next round. Thus, we became a society where language was important so her Tinderclub© didn’t swipe left.

Then we started writing stuff down. Most kings and leaders didn’t need this, but a growing segment of the population did – people like scribes and lawyers. Eventually, they made more money than people who couldn’t read. The ladies of the past weren’t so different than the ladies of today (except they couldn’t vote and were property pretty much) but the written language genes also showed up for the future.

In lots of places, but not all. Some never jumped from talking to reading, so the segment of their population that couldn’t read never got flushed. This is evident in many sub-populations even today.

Can illiterate psychics give palm readings?

Generations of humans would live and die during this period with little change in technology or the basic factors that determine the shape of their lives. They would be born and die in a house that looked just like the house (and maybe was the same house) that their ancestors 100 years previous had lived in.

Writing and reading made society more complex, and allowed ideas to span continents, and I’ve written about this before. So far, so good. But more complex societies have more complex outcomes. Rather than sort for good eyesight or the ability to take down a mammoth, the selection process moved to selecting for people who got along well with strangers, and who could plan.

The harsher the climate, the more the pressure for these selections. Did we still need people who could kill, kill, kill? Sure we did. They came along, too because their mating opportunities are high. There’s a reason that 1/8 of Asia is related to Genghis Khan. I think his go-to pickup line was “I’ll conquer your steppe, baby.”

His mom’s advice was, “Just because you Genghis Khan, doesn’t mean you Genghis Should.”

At some point around the Renaissance, Western civilization decided to get rid of the members who had impulse control issues. England, for example, started executing criminals who couldn’t control themselves, and kept it up for hundreds of years. This was pretty good at weeding out the undesirables. China had gone through this process hundreds of years in the past, which may explain why so many Chinese have a bit of Khan in their respective woodpiles.

Societies back then also let stupid people die. There wasn’t a welfare system to keep stupid people alive, so there were selection pressures for smart. Some folks call it “social Darwinism”, but I call it the universal penalty for being stupid.

Essentially, this is a society-enforced soft eugenics program, culling out a portion of the population just because they never make enough money to breed. And, let’s be honest: everyone feels bad for the kids on the short bus, but nobody really thinks they should be having kids of their own in an attempt to see how many more chromosome pairs than 23 that you can fit.

Well, 24 and Me© now has a new customer.

Society has changed now. Besides subsidizing poverty, which ensures we’ll have more of it, we’ve also changed in a fundamental way how we take in information.

The media we consume has been decreasing in complexity for over 100 years. My guess at the high-water mark for complexity in media and the most intelligent era in human history (in Western Civilization) would be around the time of Dickens. Go back and read the language of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, a series of debates meant to appeal to the common voter of the time, and tell me what would be made of the breadth of language and the depth of argument today?

Could an average eight grader keep up with it? Could an average Harvard™ freshman without having ChatGPT® or Grok© summarize it?

Since current political debates look much more (in many cases) like the wrestlers of the WWE™ before a steel-cage match, I think most people would get bored and wander off.

That’s the media that we’re trained with today.

We went from books, to magazines, to television, to 10-minute YouTube™ clips, to 20-second TikTok™ videos. Trump? His 2016 election was based on 140-character Tweets™.

The building of complex arguments has largely been abandoned in the public sphere and decisions of vast chunks of the population are made on what emotions are stirred by looking at a photograph. Certainly, many of those are now staged, and in a decade half of them will be the propaganda products of A.I.

I always make it a point to respect the modesty of women wearing bikinis by staring at the parts of their body that are covered up.

The selection and sorting still exist, but now it has (like in the film Idiocracy) selected for people who are the opposite of the groups society selected for in 1820: someone seems to want low-impulse control, and non-productive populations that are incapable of planning. Sure, it could be a coincidence that major policy initiatives all remove incentives for stupid people not to have dozens of babies.

This process, thankfully, is self-limiting. A technological society depends on a stream of competent people to plan and run society. And, no, not like Soviet Central Planning, but rather, “Hey, we need more lettuce in the Modern Mayberry Walmart©, so since we’re Walmart™ and want to make money, we should ship them some” planning.

It’s always quicker to burn down a house than to build one, so it’s really no surprise that making things worse is a lot easier than making them better. Paraphrasing what Thomas Sowell (I think) said, “We shouldn’t look at poor places and ask why they’re poor, we should look at rich places and ask why they’re rich.”

Nah, there aren’t any votes in that. And it sounds like hard work, right? Besides, stupid is growing faster than TikTok™ dance challenge videos.

Have we reached the point where we’ve made a society so complex it allows devolution to the point it can no longer be maintained? If so, congratulations! You’ve been alive during the period of peak novelty in human history.

The good news is that you can get blue-flavored PEZ™ here at the peak.

How The Great Society Doomed The United States

“Mention modern art, civil rights, or folk music, and you’re in like Flynn.” – Animal House

I didn’t go see Malcolm X in the theater because I hadn’t seen Malcolm I through IX.

Perhaps the worst seven years in the post-war history of the United States started in 1964. I’d love to blame just one political party, but it’s clear that both are to blame. This six-year period was devastating in the changes it caused in the United States, and we’re seeing the full and very negative effect of those GloboLeftElite initiatives as they blossom today.

Let’s start off with the worst one first. That is, of course, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Passed (like all of the laws in this post) over the still cooling corpse of John F. Kennedy, Johnson used that pity and sympathy to completely ride roughshod over the Constitution, people and economy of the nation.

The Civil Rights Act started as a governmental solution to a problem that was created by fundamental rights of individuals – the right to associate with whoever we wanted to – the old “We Refuse The Right To Serve Anyone”. Would the worst of the reasons leading to the Act’s passage have been handled by lesser measures or public pressure?

Certainly, that would have happened. But that’s not what happened.

I hear that quack was tearing apart the duck community.

To give a taste of the hypocrisy, surrounding the bill, talking about forced bussing of children because of race, ArchCommie Hubert Humphrey said, “ . . . if the bill were to compel it (bussing) it would be a violation of the Constitution, because it would handling the matter on the basis of race and we would be transporting children because of race.”

How did that work out for us?

I guess it was worth it to ignore the Constitution and the rights of citizens because the relations between blacks and everyone else has been healed and there were no riots in the late 1960s or 1990s or 2010s or 2020s due to race. And there is no anger and lingering resentment by the black community.

Oh, wait . . .

But, again, Humphrey was on to something – the Civil Rights Act of 1964 began to act as second Constitution. And it has evolved to cover absolutely anything and everything, leading to lawsuits that noted that the bans on euthanasia violate the civil rights of patients who wanted to die. Courts have ruled that companies have to hire people who can’t speak English, and the safety of employees who can’t understand instructions is no reason to not hire them.

I don’t know what the intent was of this Act, but that doesn’t matter. The result of it even existing has been horrific beyond measure. And it causes really stupid lawsuits because absolutely anything can be litigated: black managers sued Walgreens™ because it they were placed in predominantly black neighborhoods under the theory that black customers might like black managers better. Apparently black managers are traumatized by being forced to be around black customers?

I think Snoop was upset because his arthritis was acting up – he said, “My joints are on fire!”

This was a dream win for the GloboLeftElite – it gives them an infinite amount rules that they can make that don’t have to be consistent with themselves or even be logical. Lewis Carroll nailed it in a phrase from Through the Looking Glass: “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” The law evolves and means whatever the moment requires, protecting boys pretending to be girls, and not protecting the girls because that’s what’s important in the current moment.

The law, in the end, does not provide for civil rights: It simply strips Americans of the freedoms that the country was founded to create and creates a playground where the GloboLeftElite can change rules at a whim.

One example of particular note of how this made the world worse is the 1971 Supreme Court decision in the Griggs v. Duke Power Co. case. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that having to have job applicants possess a high school diploma (of which Duke would pay 2/3 the cost if the person didn’t have a degree) and have an acceptable I.Q. score was somehow wrong.

None of that is based on race. Yet, Duke lost the case because it had a “disparate impact” on hiring – fewer blacks had a high school diploma and could pass an I.Q. test to get certain jobs. Keep in mind that the same rules applied to everyone, not just black people.

From the objective standpoint of an employer, having an employee who had sufficient tenacity to complete a high school degree and enough intelligence to accomplish complicated tasks just might be required to run a power plant, regardless of what color the person is.

But no, even back in 1971, the rot was in. And the downstream consequences of this have been huge – since employers could no longer hire by intelligence, they had to have a proxy. That proxy? A college degree.

But she did take the test three times and added up her scores.

Now, they could ask for that because GloboLeftists are the people that run colleges, and, *poof* the Griggs degree led to a nearly immediate increase in demand for college degrees as a requirement for a job. On top of that, it has led to the mind-numbing numbers of certifications and certificates required for any job, when a simple high school degree and an I.Q. test could have solved it all.

How many billions of dollars has that cost the American people?

But it’s racist to even ask that question, right?

The next thing on the list for Johnson was the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Here’s what Teddy Kennedy said, “It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs.”

Whew, that’s a lot of lies in a row, even for a Kennedy. This was one JFK actually was all on board for, as JFK’s staff wrote A Nation of Immigrants, at the request of the Anti-Defamation League™. Hey, don’t blame me for bringing it up, it’s literally in the same sentence in the Wikipedia© entry.

I’d spend more describing the impact of this law, but, you’re soaking in it.

But there’s more.

In 1965 Johnson decided again to screw Americans, this time by removing silver from U.S. coins. Here’s what Johnson said at the time: “Our present silver coins won’t ever disappear and they won’t even become rarities… If anybody has any idea of hoarding our silver coins, let me say this. Treasury has a lot of silver on hand, and it can be, and it will be used to keep the price of silver in line with its value in our present silver coin. There will be no profit in holding them out of circulation for the value of their silver content.”

The Fed™ disagreed – whenever coins made their way, they were sorted by weight and they retained all the silver coins. They even bought a special machine to do that. Which is exactly the opposite of what you’d do if there was no profit in keeping silver coins.

Well, you know what happened: $1 in silver coins from that time are now worth over $24.

It’s funny that humor and Schumer rhyme. That’s the closest the Democrats will ever get to being funny.

Not content with only destroying race relations and sound money, the ethnic makeup of the country, and Johnson launched his Great Society program between 1964-1968. Coming off of Johnson’s post-Kennedy Democrats holding two thirds of both houses, he had a GloboLeftist paradise. Let’s have the government take control and regulate vast amounts of the economy.

This led to

Food Stamps to encourage poor people to not work,
The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 to further encourage poor people not to work,
The Elementary and Secondary Amendments which pushed federal funding, and thus control, into schools that were supposed to be locally controlled, and
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 which put federal tentacles into housing.

The Great Society had spent over $22 trillion dollars by 2014, so you can be certain that total is closer to $32 trillion today, and that doesn’t include the need to hire HR departments and compliance costs and wasted college degrees.

The national debt is $37 trillion. If we hadn’t spent all that money on Johnson’s programs?

We’d be on Mars. Or the income tax would be like $6 a year. And a dollar wouldn’t have inflated away infinity times. It’s a certainty that everyone in the United States would be wealthier.

I have heard that the restaurant on Mars has great food but not much atmosphere.

We are in a unique period – people are finally willing to look at these consequences, and have seen what is going on. Thank police body cams, thank the George Floyd riots. Thank the Internet, so people can see what’s going on without it being spun by GloboLeftElite media.

The impacts of just these rules, cumulatively has set up the place where collapse is the most likely outcome of the American Experiment. As I’ve said, there is a small window to stop it, but that window is closing rapidly, and will certainly be shut by 2028, if not by 2027.

The situation cannot stand, and that’ okay – because what will come after, in time, will be better.

Let us hope we have learned sufficient lessons when we rebuild.

Failing Justice: Vigilante In Indiana . . .

“Five hundred and twenty-seven counts of obstruction of justice.” – The Dark Knight

Behold, the American justice system! (All memes as-found today)

One of the most important requirements to have a functional society is the law. This is backed by historical evidence. One of the earliest known fragments of a legal system is the Code of Ur-Nammu. Ur-Nammu is the name of the king who wrote the laws, and the name of the country he ruled was Ur, which must have been quite a happy coincidence for King Ur-Nammu.

The kingdom of Ur was bordered on the north by Um, on the south by Uh, and on the west by Like. On the east was the kingdom of Carpetia, who, from their capital of Deepshag, specialized in creating high-quality fabric floor coverings. But that is another story.

This, though, was at least 4100 years ago. It illustrates a very simple truth: when people live together, they have to have laws and punishment or there will be chaos. Anyone who ever had a roommate or an ex-spouse can vouch for me on that one.

Thankfully, federal judges have jurisdiction in interstellar space.

The law is a very simple premise: in exchange for the promise of fairness, the individual gives up the natural rights of vengeance and retribution. This is crucial. Without law, if Britney Spears borrows $20 to buy a McChicken™ sandwich at 3am and then doesn’t pay me back, I could drive to her house and kidnap her pet ocelot until she repaid me. I know, I know, that sounds oddly specific, but there are some stories I just won’t get into.

Instead, I can sue Britney Spears in court, and if all of the facts are properly judged, that McChicken®-eating soulless tart will give me back that $20. Or, maybe, I lost that IOU she signed on the back of my travel copy of the Magna Carta and the judge says, “Insufficient evidence” and frog marches us both out of court.

As long as everyone feels the system is fair, life is good. But when people sense that fairness is gone, they’ll take matters into their own hands. This is scary, because it leads to a series of endless reciprocal atrocities. Another word for this is Chicago. Or Mogadishu. Or El Salvador.

Still waiting, Pam.

The people in those locations don’t believe in the law. Those wandering around killing don’t want cops, obviously. But most of the people that they kill don’t want cops, either, since they’re killing as well. The bystanders and clueless non-violent civilians who wander into the games would like law, but it often doesn’t matter.

The punishments are rare, and when they finally hit, aren’t a sufficient deterrent to others going out to break yet more crimes. Part of the reason is that most of these criminals are really stupid. I don’t mean that euphemistically – they’re stupid. Low IQ correlates with high crime. The stupider they are, the more likely they are to kill.

There are many reasons for that, from inability to plan, to the inability to understand a conditional hypothetical (“How would you feel if you didn’t have breakfast, Jamal?” “But I did have breakfast.”), to the inability to think that their actions might have consequences.

Amazing how opposition to Trump will make the GloboLeft contort themselves.

No, for the law to work on stupid people, the punishment must be swift, severe, and certain. Our current justice system is none of these. Cases last for years, most crimes are dealt with by being dismissed or through a plea to a far lesser offences, and Soros D.A.s frequently drop the charges on rapists and murderers.

If that isn’t bad enough – juries are tribal. The first big case I saw that confirmed this was O.J. Simpson’s murder trial.

It’s pretty obvious that O.J. Simpson killed his ex-wife. This is a non-ideological question. But it is not a non-racial question. Why was he found not guilty? It was because he was black and killed a white woman. The black jurors certainly weren’t going to convict him.

Do we think a black juror will vote to convict Karmello Anthony? Or that a pliable D.A. won’t give him a sweetheart plea deal so he can do two years in the slam and then be out? That leads to a loss of faith in the system.

What happens when we lose faith in the justice system? Well, in Indiana, one great-grandfather lost faith in the system. 65-year-old Mark Vawter was waiting, likely, to shoot and kill one S’Doni Pettis.

Why would a great-grandfather want to do that? Because Mr. Pettis had, while (allegedly) with drugs and while being chased by police, Mr. Pettis had driven a car at great speed into an innocent bystander’s car causing it to burst into flame. Inside? Mr. Vawter’s 3-year-old and 2-month-old great-grandchildren. Mr. Vawter probably had seen that Mr. Pettis was charged with 3 counts of a level 3 felony. In Indiana, that could put him out on the streets again in less than three years.

And Mr. Vawter had probably learned that Mr. Pettis had already been charged with an attempted murder, but the case was plea-bargained down to an aggravated battery. He went to jail, and . . .

Pettis was likely let out early.

Mr. Vawter calculated that the system would probably fail again, and decided to take matters into his own hands. Vawter waited with a pistol, and drew it when the prison van doors opened. What Vawter didn’t know was that Pettis wasn’t on the van – his hearing had been postponed.

Vawter was shot by the police.

Vigilantism is something that has been feared by governments for more than 4,000 years. When individuals feel that they have no choice but to enforce justice themselves, you have the chaos of gang warfare.

But thankfully in the UK, you know the justice system is working, and people will get longer sentences than Mr. Pettis for speaking their minds . . .

The justice system is important, and it’s failing. There will be consequences.

Tariffs: How’s That Going For You?

“One watch, gold. One cigarette lighter, gold.” – The Usual Suspects

I’d like to thank France for the help giving the United States independence. If it weren’t for them, we’d still be speaking English right now.

Tariffs are now in place, and in various stages of implementation. They are a very big change from the previous game, which was a seemingly sweet deal: Americans send cash that was just “printed”. Foreigners send stuff that they made. Since 1973, they have been super polite: they didn’t even ask us for gold.

They trusted us!

Essentially, this was an “Americans have nukes and are the unipower” tax. As I’ve written before, this had a negative impact on the composition of the American economy, moving from manufacturing to making accounting anomalies.

The rise of China as a manufacturing and economic powerhouse was the biggest challenge to the “unipower” concept, which was born out of the “sweet” deal – they sent us plastic junk while developing world-class manufacturing skills.

China is now number one in manufacturing, with 30% of the global output, as well as being the largest producer of wheat, rice, vegetables, fruits, and pork. This is despite the continuous headline of the last thirty years about “Now China Will Really Face The Music”.

No, not really.

To be clear, it wasn’t just Joe. Meme as found.

So, China has grown, but the United States overplayed its hand to make problems accelerate, and I’m not talking about Trump’s tariffs. No, I’m talking about when Biden embargoed Russia from the international payment system while taking Russia’s money and buying Ukraine something nice with it.

When Biden chose that action, the whole world took notes. Cutting Russia off from the SWIFT payment system seemed like a good idea. Except China thought, “Hey, they still owe me for all those iPhones™ they promised to pay me for.” Immediately this bought the BRICS closer together, and they’re working on ways that they can more seamlessly work together – around the United States if need be.

The reason gold prices are up is that the dollar is worth less, not that gold is suddenly even more scarce. Trust in dollars tanked: people are looking for a hedge so that they won’t lose their wealth through exposure to meme dollars. The proof?

They don’t trust the dollar, or graphs. They think the graphs are plotting something. (graph via Dollarcollapse)

Gold didn’t take off in 2025. Or 2024. Or 2023. Gold took off exactly when Biden sanctioned Russia in 2022 after the Russians invaded Ukraine. Part of the game for the world using the dollar is that we wouldn’t weaponize it.

Oops.

That’s a card you get to play exactly once.

And it backfired. Bigly.

Tariffs are about changing that game, yet again. And it is possibly a pretty long shot, but when it’s the bottom of the ninth and you’ve got a man on first, the temptation is to swing away.

Tariffs have already changed the game. Imports in April are already down 40% year over year, and although a string of ships are still headed our way from China, rumors are that the numbers are down even more.

I first threw a boomerang when I was seven. I live in constant fear.

To give an example of an individual’s complaint about the tariffs, one father was buying his daughter a dress. To be clear, they didn’t specify it was a girl, but it’s 2025, so who can say. Anyway, the daughter had found the perfect dress to wear to a wedding on TEMU™. It was $19. But when the father went to check out, the price had gone up to $59 with tariff.

Now, since TEMU’s© slogan is “Shop Like A Billionaire™” it shouldn’t have mattered, though I can’t see Elon spending time on TEMU™ buying himself sundresses. But was the price reasonable?

Probably. TEMU® has been accused of copying and stealing designs from fashion designers and artists, so I’m sure that there’s no karma in this. Beyond that, though, if we want to be a nation that has consumed itself to death, we should avoid tariffs so TEMU© can grow stronger. So that’s in import.

TEMU® is for people who can’t afford Goodwill™.

Let’s switch to exports.

In one of the weirder stories, pork imports by China from the United States are down. That’s not weird because they slapped a tariff on pork, but the weird part is that this will probably hit the largest US pork producer the hardest. That’s Smithfield Foods©, which is owned by . . . Chy-Na. So, they’re not importing pigs they already own because they put a tariff on those pigs.

That they own.

Which means cheaper bacon in the United States at the expense of the profit margin for multinational corporations. I can deal with that.

Back to the big picture. The imports being lowered by 40% will have a knock-on effect.

Truckers will have fewer loads to transport across the country,
Which means that there will be less demand for diesel fuel,
Which means lower diesel prices.

Overall, the economy has been projected to have shrunk by 2.5% in the first quarter, and with a big hit to imports, chances are nearly 100% that the economy will shrink in the second quarter as well. That means a recession.

I don’t give money to homeless people because I know that they’ll spend it on alcohol when I could spend it on alcohol instead.

But don’t just take my word for it: when I mentioned that the economy would be hitting a recession, The Mrs. scoffed: “We’ve been in one for over a year. Maybe two years.”

She’s right. On a regional basis, and in the places where GloboLeftists don’t strap on the taxpayer money feedbag, the economy likely has been in a stagflation-recession for the last two years. Nobody at USAID noticed it, because they just got continual increases in salary like clockwork and a pension plan better than anything in the private sector.

Going forward, Biden’s sanctioning of Russia made it so we couldn’t print cash anymore: he killed the golden goose. To be fair, it was already sick. Trump (or somebody he knows that says nice things about him) realized it, and, boom, tariffs.

The game is afoot. Can we become net producers again before people don’t want dollars? It’s a race.

But there’s always gold.

Notice: This is not financial advice, since I’m an unpaid humor blogger that writes for my own personal amusement and if you do the things that I’ve done that might make you part of the punchline, and not in the good way. I am not an attorney, accountant, financial advisor, mime, or clairvoyant nor do I pretend to be and I have not stayed at a Holiday Inn™ Express© recently. This website is not a substitute for consultation with an investment professional that is saner and more stable than I am and who is actually, you know, an investment professional who hasn’t tossed back a few shots of bourbon. I expressly suggest you seek advice from a competent professional and accept no liability for any loss or damage that you incur. Gold has gone up in the past. It has also gone down. Not my job to make your decisions: it’s on you, bub.

How Expensive Housing Leads To An Oversupply Of Wine Aunts

“You won’t lose the house. Everybody has three mortgages nowadays.” – Ghostbusters

When Zoomers start to pass away, will they have eulogis?

FYI – no podcast tonight. I’m sure you’re shocked. I’m out travelling. Next week???

The American economy is broken in several ways, but one of the biggest is housing. When I was a wee Wilder in my twenties, I bought a house that was about twice my income. The mortgage payment was doable, just barely.

I just looked up what it’s going for today, and the answer was . . . over 10 times what I paid for it. Was it a nice house? Sure. But not that nice. Why did it go up 10 times in value?

Several reasons, and not because it grew a hot tub and a golden toilet, either.

This particular house was nice because it was in a suburban neighborhood where the schools weren’t . . . bad. The local elementary school and high school were pretty safe which was why we bought it in that area in the first place. Places with “good schools” tend to have much higher property values than those that don’t have good schools.

But good schools lead to high home prices because a mother will sacrifice her husband’s kidney to the Hong Kong black market to get her kid into a good school.

Why does that picture remind me of the media during COVID?

A lot of that is bounded by driving distance – people will drive a long ways to have good schools, but there is a limit. The suburbs were set up based on just that mathematical tradeoff. The fact that the ‘burbs had much higher appreciation just means people will pay a lot to avoid . . . bad schools.

Around this time, people stopped looking at homes as a place to live, and started looking at them as an investment. What they noticed was that prices in the ‘burbs seemed to go up faster than their salary, so houses began to resemble shake-shingled slot machines.

Places like California saw this effect first – as big city with a very desirable climate, people flocked there for the jobs created by a variety of businesses, from defense to entertainment to manufacturing to importing illegals.

Enter the predators.

Blackstone® is now there in California. Recently, they’ve been building housing in San Diego. Rent? $3000 to $4000. A month. But it’s not just California – the median housing payment for people who bought homes is now a record – $2,819, not including taxes and insurance.

There are, of course, two sides to the equation: my freshman economics prof would note that supply and demand have led to this situation.

During COVID, there were a lot of trials held on Zoom™. Does that mean the case was settled out of court?

Demand is up because tens of millions of illegals have flooded this country in an unabated wave. Whereas a typical American family has three or five people living in it (nine if you’re the Brady family) the average foreigners will often rent a cot in a kitchen so that the houses are packed with people, India-style, so that 10 or 15 people are paying $200 a week to live in these homes. A landlord could make $8,000 or $12,000 gross profit if they rented to people to whom that would still be better than living in Haiti or India.

Yup, turning suburban houses into Mumbai Motel 6 one cot at a time.

Oh, and I mentioned Blackrock™. Not content to strip mine American companies by loading them down with debt and ejecting them like Osama Bin Laden’s corpse off a flight deck, the private equity firms have entered as a competitor, buying houses with one goal: to turn people from one-time purchasers into full-time wagie wealth engines who end up paying but never owning.

You’ve heard their slogan: You’ll own nothing, and like it™. Hey, at least you can put a happy face on your rent check. Wait. It’s all direct withdrawal now.

So, there’s the demand problem. Americans didn’t ask for this, but here it is.

What do you say to your English teacher when she’s crying? “There, they’re, their.”

What about supply?

Supply isn’t increasing to match demand. There are lots of reasons for this, among them zoning laws, environmental laws, contractor requirements, building codes, and other Not In My BackYard (NIMBY) restrictions that make it complicated and expensive to build anything. In fact, in places like California, it’s turned into BANANA – Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.

That reduces supply.

If you bought a home 25 or 35 years ago in a place like this, congratulations. The restrictions in supply of housing make your investment worth a lot more than it would normally be worth if the market were functioning properly. I suppose the upside is that very expensive houses create the perfect environment for . . . good schools.

That has other consequences, though.

The Mrs. asked me if I had a police record. “No, but I do have one by Sting.”

Whereas I could get into a house at the age of 24, that’s simply not the case for kids today in most areas. My modest first home (I checked its current value) would lead to a full-in payment of at least $5,000 a month. That’s $60,000 a year, after tax.

Not a lot of just out of college kids can afford that, so forgetaboutit.

Young families are locked out in that area.

That has a knock-on effect: lower family formation, lower numbers of children being born, and miserable young men. Oh, there are miserable women, too, but they’re older than forty and they’re miserable when they find out that the only role left for them in society is Cat Loving Wine Aunt™.

As I said above – the economy is broken, and housing is part of it. Oh, wait, now we have an oversupply of wine aunts.

Will that result in making box Chardonnay too expensive?