Category: Weimerica

When Change Comes

“There have been three major disasters and you were the only one unharmed.” – Unbreakable

What’s white, loud, and makes you spill your morning coffee? An avalanche.

There is a time and place when everything changes.

Sure, summer turns to fall which turns to winter which turns to, um, Daylight Savings Time. Regardless, like the seasons, some changes are reversible. I can freeze water and turn it into ice. Then, I can melt it and it’s water again and then I can freeze it. I then put it over my eyes – at least that way I look cool.

I saw Vanilla Ice at the local arena recently. He sold me a hot dog.

Reversible changes surround us. But there are irreversible changes, too. If I burn a piece of paper, it’s just gone. Forever. There is no physical process that can unburn the paper. Or bring back that Tweet® once you hit send – just ask Rosanne.

Changes like that happen to people and systems, too. I’m not going to focus on Russia tonight, but looking at Russia and Ukraine is instructive. When the ruble fell, it’s reversible. Will it reverse? Probably. At some point.

Maybe.

Will Ukraine ever be uninvaded? Nope. Heck, if you look at the history of Kiev/Kyiv it’s invaded approximately once every seven months. If ever there was a country that was more invaded, it wasn’t China, since only one person would take the Khansequences. The Ukrainian currency is called the hryvnia and it appears to be missing vowels. If Russia ends up conquering Ukraine, it won’t need any, since it, like the Roman denarius or the Babylonian shekel, will cease to exist.

There’s going to be so much losing. You’ll be tired of losing.

There are some things that you just don’t go back from. And that’s life. I wish I could go back in time and tell Pa Wilder to buy all the gold he could when anyone could purchase it all day long for $35 an ounce. If he had done that, I would have been a bullion heir.

In retrospect, it looks obvious. When Nixon did the irreversible – disconnected the dollar from gold, what did Pa Wilder think was going to happen? He thought the dollar would keep its value.

Why?

Because, after decades of the dollar being worth $35 an ounce, why would it ever change? For forty years of Pa’s life – gold had been priced at $35 an ounce. Gold would be (in the average person’s eyes in 1973) not a great investment.

But people, including Pa, missed the point. There was no physical process that would ever result in the dollar being backed by gold again. Nixon took the United States off the gold standard because he’d printed too much cash. And, as Biden will soon learn, prosperity doesn’t come from a printing press.

Wait, he made his money in Ukraine . . . .

I was watching a video from TIK History tonight when he brought up the conversation between a German and his banker back during Weimar Germany. “If you had only bought Swiss Francs (backed by gold) you would not have lost half your fortune.”

“But these are government bonds. Won’t they pay back?”

“The government that issued them no longer exists.”

In the United States, we have been in a very, very fortunate position. Our currency has been only ravaged by inflation and political theft over the years. We’ve been able to print up large quantities of dollars and just ship them over to people in other countries and they send us iPhones™ and soccer balls made by 12 year-olds since they apparently don’t have printing presses. Or because they have excess 12 year-olds.

Honestly, I’ve had 12 year-olds around the house, and I think one 12-year-old constitutes an excess 12-year-old.

Also, little kids from Nigeria are trying to give him US FIVE MILLION COOKYS.

Many currencies, like the Russian ruble, have been rendered nearly worthless nearly immediately by geopolitical events. That event is coming for the dollar.

I can’t tell you the date. I can’t give you the exact circumstances. But I will tell you that Charles Munger (Warren Buffet’s buddy) was in an interview where he flat out said that the dollar is eventually going to zero. The interviewer missed the point – when a currency implodes and goes to zero there is shock. There is starvation.

There are civil wars. There are revolutions.

But I can tell you after 2020, 2021, and now 2022 so far . . . change is in the air.

Financial Vulnerability – Who Owns Your Money?

“Also, I’ve been told that the company’s expense accounts have been frozen. . . “ – Arrested Development

It’s hard to explain theft to a government, because they take things, literally.

The power to regulate is the power to destroy.  If you know who has that power over your life, that’s one aspect of preparedness – financial or otherwise.

Here’s an example I saw play out in real life:  In Modern Mayberry there was a retailer who had a small specialty shop.  Now, in Modern Mayberry there are limited shopping opportunities.  There’s the Walmart®.  There are seventeen antique stores selling stuff from nearby barns.  There’s a used kids clothes store – they’re very specific about just taking the clothes.  I tried to sell Pugsley during his difficult phase, and they simply wouldn’t take him.

But this shop was different.  It was a very specialized store – bicycles and parts – and nice bikes, the ones that cost more than the $75 that Walmart™ wants for a Huffy© with “some assembly required.”  It just so happened I was going through a biking phase, so I was gearing up.  One day, I got a package that I’d ordered from Amazon™ – I noticed that this small package (bicycle stuff) had come from the local retailer.

I thought to myself, “That’s weird.  Not as weird as a badger wearing underwear and lip gloss, but it’s not Saturday night yet, either.”

I did find two badgers in a U-Haul® once and called the ranger.  “Are they moving?” he asked.  “Maybe.  I guess that would explain the U-Haul®,” I replied.

I walked in there since I’d bought my bike from him and asked the owner what was up.  About the bikes, not the badgers.  I don’t think anyone can explain the badgers except people over at the military base, and they’re not talking.

The owner explained his business model to me.  It turned out that he did very little business locally.  What he had done was to build a small niche business selling specialty bike stuff on Amazon©.  Even though his merchandise was branded by non-Chinese makers, he bought it in bulk from China and sold it via Amazon®.

“I even sell some of it back to customers in China,” he laughed.

Then one day, Amazon© changed (in some fashion, I’m not aware of the details) the terms of the deal.  Within six months the shop was closed.  Within a year, he was divorced and had sold his house and had left to wander and find rights to wrong, or wrongs to write.  Or something.  I kinda got bored after he kept wanting me to snatch a pebble from his hand and stopped listening.

The six or so employees?  Also gone.  Not dead.  Just had to find new jobs, like looking for stuff in barns.  Side question – where did barn owls sleep before we invented barns?

The entire business gone – all with one, simple rule change.

Is there freedom of speech in Canada?  Sure, but if the government doesn’t agree with you, there won’t be freedom after speech.

Canada made a simple rule change, too.  They suspended the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  They decided that if you disagreed with them politically, you could have your money frozen.  I’d use the word “stolen” but it’s not clear that’s the case yet.  Of course, like any breaking news in the land of the Internet, take every story you see below with a grain of salt.

I knew Trudeau had a fixation on single moms, but this is ridiculous:

And they can shut down your life nearly immediately:

The idea is clear, though.  Just like that small businessman in Modern Mayberry, one tiny rule change can make everything go away.  In this case, of course, the rule change wasn’t tiny.  It allows banks to shut down the accounts of those people who try to get all their money.

And for what crime?  Giving (in some cases) token amounts to the Truckers Who Honked.  A $50 donation, made before the emergency act, before it was “illegal” resulted in all of her cash being (at least for now) forfeit.

To be clear, if the government can do that with a stroke of a pen, is it really your money?  Thankfully, though the Canadian government is taking a stand against tyranny.  In Ukraine:

Roses are red, sorry for the hypocrisy, we’ve just updated our foreign policy.

There was a push a while back for what’s called “Universal Basic Income.”  The idea that everyone would get a check each month for breathing.  Think the government would manipulate that to manipulate you?

Nah, no danger in with this, right?

It gets worse.  It turns out that this is, by far, the biggest dream that Leftists have had since, well, forever.  Let’s hear it straight from one of them on Plebbit® (Reddit©). . . .

This is what they admit that they want to do to those who don’t follow their dictates.  They admit this in public.  The poet and well-known philosophizer Samuel Hyde perhaps said it best:

And there’s certainly no danger and nothing you’d have to prepare for with this new government change, is there?

Canada, Lies, and Videotape

“When the truth offends, we lie and lie, until we can no longer remember it is ever there. But it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.” – Chernobyl

I hear Justin got great Marx in school.

On Friday the folks that run the hosting service told me that the place was infected again.  This is a (more or less) normal occurrence since I wrote the post telling Mr. Biden exactly where he could shove his bald-faced threat of war against average Americans.  That’s when the hacking started.  It comes and goes in fits and starts.

The most frequent times are when I bring up points against The Narrative.  Particularly, they were worried about COVID and any sort of deviation from “vaxx is Mother, vaxx is Father, and you should do anything that the State says.”  Those things tend to correlate strongly with attacks.  Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, and three times is enemy action.

I think the latest thing to set them off (and this was a fairly strong set-off) was the post /pol/ versus The Canadian Banking System.  Huh.  Who would have thought that central bankers would have thought that the idea of collapsing the banking system would be so very scary that they would go after anyone who dared point out that Empress Justine (and the Canadian financial system) had no clothes?

I would think that the deeper the truth, the more they’d go to suppress it.  And that appears to be just the case with everything going on in Canada.

First, there’s the law itself.  The Emergency Measures apply to, shall we say, a very limited group of people.  If LGBTQ+ Afghan refugees wants to burn down Ottawa, that’s fine.  Just can’t have truckers with bouncy houses.

The long-term goal is to make these new powers permanent.  This allows government to have nearly unprecedented control in Canada.

Thankfully for Justin, many world leaders liked his methods:

The police in Ottawa also have signaled that they want revenge.  They will not stop until every single person involved in the peaceful protest in Ottawa is punished.

Leftists, of course, agree fully with this:

They agree so much, that they probably bought the story that was going through the news media.  As the police were breaking up the protesters, they brought in mounted police.  According to the radio station I was listening to, a protester had “thrown a bicycle at the horses.”  At least we know who would have turned in Anne Frank so that they could have been good boys.

No, it’s not your imagination, there isn’t a bicycle there.  Why?  Because it’s a mobility scooter.  Soon enough, the Toronto Star© jumped in and said that people were faking photos to make the Mounties look bad.

Thankfully, I have a picture of the top Toronto Star™ correspondent.  I think his name is Bob.

I also got a copy of the Toronto Star® journalism guide.  It’s low on words, since I’m not sure many of them can read:

Here’s a picture of the event, with the mobility scooter crushed in the snow.  It could be fake, right?

Yes, it could be fake.  I had that thought myself, until I found not one, but two videos that corroborated it completely.  I tried to upload the media files in a player, and if that failed you can download the media below:

Video 1

Video 2

Here’s what the nice lady looks like:

Solzhenitsyn perhaps said it best:

So, they will lie to you.  They will take your jobs, take all your money.  They have threatened to take children from protesters, and have threatened to kill their pets.  It’s clear how they feel about Canada.

Always remember, when they give you no choice, that’s where freedom begins.

War, You’re Soaking In It

“Fiddle-dee-dee! War, war, war, This war talk’s spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream. Besides, there isn’t going to be any war.” – Gone With the Wind

For whatever reason, French players are in “spectator only” mode.

War.  It’s one way we find out the difference between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin.

The traditional way that most people think about war involves troops and uniforms and guns and bombs.  That’s why people are focused on Ukraine – it seems like a time when the world might once again see something like in the old war movies.  Biden is especially wanting this, because it could distract the world from the economic and cultural ruin that’s spreading in the United States.  How else do you explain the free crack pipe initiative?

As I’ve noted before, the United States has spent trillions of dollars to try to make the “old” form of war obsolete.  As such, don’t expect the next war to look anything like the last wars.  Just like civilization, technology, and economy have evolved, so have the methods of war.

The aim of war is still the same, however:  to get your enemy to do something they would otherwise be unwilling to do, like watch The View.  You don’t have to use tanks or bombs to do it.  This was what the old Soviet Union planned to do with the United States – subvert it from within.

The Cold War really was a war.  The United States attempted to subvert the Soviet citizens through exposing them to the wonders of capitalism.  Plentiful food, for starters.  Blue jeans.  Rock and roll.  The average citizens could see that something was really, really wrong in their society.  At the end, people in the Eastern Bloc walked away from their governments.  In some cases, they evicted the former leadership 7.62mm at a time.

The Romanians made sure there wasn’t a next season.

The Soviet subversion of the United States was similar.  Just as the United States reviewed the cultural faults of the Soviets and exploited them, the Soviets looked at the problems in the United States and tried to undermine it using those problems.

And the undermining never stopped.  If you looked at the institutions under control of the Left in the 1970s, there weren’t that many.  The Left controlled:

  • Many Colleges and Universities.
  • The psychological establishment.
  • Lots of mainstream entertainment media.
  • Most mainstream news media.

This was, of course, the plan.  Get the Leftist foothold in academia and use it to indoctrinate the next generation.  The Left didn’t control the government schools at the time, because teachers work a long time, and most of the teachers in the 1970s graduated before the colleges fell.

Hippies refused Rolaids™, the last thing they wanted was an anti-acid.

That’s why this war was based on a “long march” through the institutions.  Sadly, even though the Soviet Union dissolved, their plan was still in motion.  Now, the following are mostly under the control of the Left:

  • The K-12 educational system.
  • Most Protestant religious organizations.
  • Most Catholic organizations.
  • The American Medical Association.
  • Most departments of the Federal government, absent the armed services.
  • The general officer corps of the armed services.
  • The courts.
  • Silicon Valley tech companies.
  • Most Fortune® 500™ companies.

Very quickly (within a decade, if nothing changes) the last institution will fall:

  • The junior officers and enlisted men of the armed services.

As I’ve discussed at length, part of the core of Leftism is hating the United States, the other is a pathological need to be a victim.  That’s why Leftist entertainment media always portrays the good guys as “the resistance” – what are they resisting?  The remnants of the United States.  Why do the statues have to come down?

Al has a molar pulled:  it was an inconvenient tooth.

The United States (as viewed from a common historical lens) cannot be allowed to have its mythology.  That mythology must be replaced by the new narrative – a mythology based on victimhood and oppression.  Even as they control the levers on every objective means of institutional power, they complain that the system is rigged against them.

Combined with that is the monetary policy of the United States which has been run with all of the discipline of a toddler in a room filled with chocolate birthday cakes.  As the bill for this mismanagement comes due, the tensions in the country will skyrocket.

The only thing the Left doesn’t have, are (at least) 80 million Americans who want nothing to do with the brave globalist/socialist future that’s planned.  I actually think the number will be substantially higher, because I think that when the center chooses sides, it will come down with the Right.

This situation is, of course, absolutely thrilling to China.  When I think about how China must factor in the United States into their plans in, say, the year 2040?  I think they assume that the United States will not be a factor on a global scale.

In the US, dogs are K-9.  In China, they are E-10.

In addition to the Soviet plan coming to final fruition, the United States is amazingly vulnerable to other things we don’t traditionally think of as war.  As mentioned above, we have an amazing mess in our monetary policy – and we have debt.  Think inflation is high now?  What happens when China starts dumping currency in the international market, and starts paying for oil with the Yuan?

Warfare in our current time starts to look like what someone did to the Iranians:  drop in a virus that makes their centrifuges that they were using to process nuclear material break.  Imagine the electrical grid being as reliable as Venezuela’s grid.  Sure, it could be enemy action.  But with current trends, it could also be our own ineptitude at running things in a world where hiring by merit seems to be a thing of the past.

What happens if every tenth financial transaction in our electronic payment system is “missed”?  How many days until the payment infrastructure is shut down and the entire country is in chaos?  What happens if Walmart™ experiences failure in the logistics and tracking system for the billions of dollars worth of goods that it handles?  How many people does Walmart© feed?

Due to the current emergency, Walmart™ has announced that they’ll open a second register.

These are all warfare, and don’t require a single soldier or a panzer division.  Moreover, this is exactly the type of warfare that has already been planned and prepared for in Moscow and Beijing.

I’d love to blame China, but the Chinese are mainly just looking out for the Chinese.  If the United States is in the way, the Chinese are going to pick the Chinese every time.  It’s self-interest.

And Biden and Putin?  One is a church-going Christian who loves his nation, who wants to help his people, and wants to secure his border.  The other is Joe Biden.

Human Chow: It’s What’s For Dinner

“Bachelor Chow™ . . . now with flavor.” – Futurama

I heard that it was projected that the next Muslim country to have nukes is going to be France.

It’s no surprise to anyone that the biggest health problem in 2022 isn’t the ‘Rona, it’s people who are overweight.  I’d imagine that most of you have seen the .gif that shows state after state with an increasing Body Mass Index (BMI) over time.  I just checked my BMI, and according to the chart I have to grow at least five more inches.

Part of my question as I’ve seen this epidemic unfold has been, why?  It’s not like the people in the United States suddenly lost willpower started consuming crap for no reason, though that would explain the popularity of Friends.  Although I think there are several other significant causes I think one of the biggest has been the rise of ultraprocessed foods.

Most foods (for all of my life) have been processed to some degree.  Ma Wilder didn’t feed us raw wheat – nope.  She used white flour in cooking and baking bread since mass-produced flour was cheap and lasted in the cabinet forever.  Ma Wilder told me that, since I was adopted, I would have to eat bread only from self-raising flour.

What’s the difference between Nic Cage and someone allergic to wheat?  Nic would never turn down a roll.

Processing of flour from wheat changes not only the nutrient profile – it pulled out the parts of the wheat kernel that don’t store well as flour – but it also changed how it acts when eaten.  An example:  wheat flour is made into the familiar powder that we’re used to.  This makes it easier to store and ship.  It also makes it pretty tasty.

The final thing I want to mention about flour is that mashing wheat up into a powder changes how quickly I’ll get to use the nutrients of the flour when I eat it.

Let me explain:

If I ate just a plain wheat kernel, I’d be able to digest most of it, but it would take hours of time and energy.  If I eat a piece of tasty, tasty bread, it’s available for use nearly immediately.

Especially the carbs.  I’ll save insulin discussion for a later post, but ultraprocessed foods have an amazing impact on insulin production.

And the physical form of the food can also make people fatter.  When rats were given (I assume) Rat Chow®, some bored grad student came up with the idea of feeding some rats plain Rat Chow©.  The other rats, however, they smashed up the Rat Chow™ into a powder.

Like I said, bored grad students.  Possibly drunk.

What’s the difference between rat poison and Diet Coke®?  Diet Coke™ has better advertising.

What happened?  The rats with the powdered food got fat and the rats that ate the “plain” food didn’t, even though both groups of rats were eating the same amount of calories.  The change in form changed the way the food acted in the rats – it made the nutrients available more quickly, which (again, because of insulin) made the rats fat.

Heck, it’s not even just the flour and powdered rat food.

An even bigger bomb to the body is sugar.  Sugar was once very uncommon as human food.  Our ancestors got it from berries (not a lot, but some) and, when they could fight the bees back, from honey.

If I get diabetes, will that make me a sugar daddy?

Domestication and widespread production of sugar didn’t occur until the folks in India figured it out in the early Anno Domini centuries (note to Zoomers, this was before the Internet).  They figured out how to take the juices from sugar cane (which can’t be stored or shipped well) and turned it into granulated sugar, which could be saved forever, and shipped across continents.

But for most of human history, sugar was wickedly expensive, and only the wealthy could afford to have it regularly.  Now?  I can buy granulated sugar for $0.50 per pound.  Sugar prices are going up, sure, but I can buy a wholesale ton of sugar for less than $500.

The next category of foods that just weren’t available to humans were vegetable oils.  I’m not talking about olive oil which is pressed and can be used just as it comes off the press – I’m talking about corn oils, canola oils, soybean oils.  As produced in modern times, these are really chemical products that depend on chemical processes to make them usable.

Their history has been slippery.  Transfats – or fats that were unsaturated after being subjected to chemical processing, were supposed to be healthier than butter.  We were told so.  Now it turns out that they increased the risk of heart attacks.  Oops.  Now, instead of being promoted by the government, they’re illegal to put in food.  And butter is now good for you.

The main thing about these processed foods is that they are cheap to make.  Some combination of flours oils, sugars, and . . . well, let’s take a look at the Totino’s® Pizza Roll ingredient list:

What’s the difference between a bag of pizza rolls and a musician?  A bag of pizza rolls can feed a family.

It’s an amazing list of chemicals.  I just really hesitate to call it food, however.  It’s what the word ultraprocessed was made to describe.  I was watching a video by Dr. Pradip Jamnadas (cardiologist, and I do recommend his YouTube® vidyas) and he had a word that was even more descriptive for foods like this:  pre-digested.

A lot of the work that our wonderfully designed digestive system goes through to get energy out of food is simply not necessary with Totino’s© Human Chow Pizza Rolls.  In large part the food is designed to hit the digestive system, and flood the body with calories, ringing the dopamine bell in the brain.

I really do think they’re tasty.  I don’t plan on eating them except on very rare occasions, because when I look at the label now, I don’t see what looks like . . . food.  It looks like Elon Musk’s shopping list for when he’s trying to create artificial life.

But the real purpose of this is to sell as many Totino’s® Pizza Rolls as possible and make the greatest profit.  This leads to one question that illustrates an overlap between libertarianism and communism:  “How much sawdust can I put in the food?”

On my diet I can have a libertarian salad:  lettuce alone.

To a certain extent, these ultraprocessed foods have succeeded admirably.  They’ve allowed cheap ingredients (often made from low-value byproducts) to feed millions of people at a reasonable cost.  The problem, though, are the consequences that we see now:  the calories taken in impact the human system in vastly different ways than the food that we were designed to consume.

So, my plan is to eat as close to real food as possible – meat, fish, eggs, and whole veggies.

And, yes, an occasional pizza roll, too.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: The Jenga® Civil War And Lessons From Canada

“Superhero landing. She’s gonna do a superhero landing. Wait for it.” – Deadpool

What’s more than step 9, but not quite to step 10? This clock.

  1. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  2. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  3. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  4. Open War.

As close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful. Things could change at any minute. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – The Jenga® Civil War – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Lessons From Canada – 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 640 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

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

The Jenga™ Civil War

The game of Jenga© has been pretty popular in the United States since it was introduced into the United States. The object of the game should be familiar to most – build a tower taller and taller until it falls. It always falls. Someone tips the table, someone pulls out the one piece that shouldn’t come out, or Islamic terrorists decide to fly a chicken wing into it.

But Jenga™ illustrates something else. If you keep increasing the instability of a structure, it will fail. It’s an when, not an if. Jenga® doesn’t end until the tower falls over, and each pull and replace of a piece reduces stability.

As found on the Internet.

What causes the collapse?

It doesn’t matter, unless you’re the player that does it. What matters are the conditions. As I’ve tried to do below with the graphs, I’ve tried to create a barometer for conditions that might lead to Civil War. And, no, we’re really not there yet. Is the blood flowing? Certainly.

Are both sides engaged? Certainly not. That’s what scares the Leftists in Washington, D.C. to no end. The idea that people on the Right will engage in a strategic sense to start and end the phase of open-armed warfare keeps them up at night.

And it should. But, again, it’s not the spark. Historians in the future will write about the spark, but the spark would have no effect if the conditions weren’t there. What are the conditions? You know them, you feel them. There is no sense of who and what we are anymore.

As found.

As a nation, we have no goals except what hedonism can be sold to us weekly. It’s what’s streaming, what’s playing, and what new McFood© is coming out this week. Commercial activity can’t be the binding for a nation, so our ties are just as tight as those Jenga™ bricks, kept together by gravity, inertia and little else.

And every week the tower gets one brick higher.

Think Joe’s not taking this seriously?

Violence And Censorship Update

Again, not much on the organized violence this January. Censorship, as usual, is busy.

Rogan

Joe Rogan is a podcaster who has managed to become slightly more popular than me. His podcasts regularly pull 11,000,000 listeners. Rogan also was big enough to get serious A-list quests. All of that made Spotify® decide that Rogan is valuable. How valuable? They pay Rogan more than they pay for every bit of music that they stream. Yes. Joe Rogan is more important to Spotify© than all of the recorded music in the history of the world. He’s worth $100,000,000 to them.

And he’s said things that irritate people invested in the Narrative. He’s not vaxxed, and has (like your humble host) had the ‘VID. He took Ivermectin. I got by with chicken soup and loads of decongestant. I’ve never been much to listen to Joe, I’ve probably only heard a few minutes (in total) of his podcasts.

They’ve been after Joe, and it started with Neil Young. Despite being less relevant than greased back Fonzie hair, Neil made the papers with his demand that his music be pulled off of Spotify© because Joe Rogan said things he didn’t agree with. Then other, equally irrelevant artists followed stamping their walkers to demand that Spotify® not play them to the one person that asks for their song every six months.

As found.

That was just the start. Someone has now have gone back through Rogan’s early podcasts and have a supercut of him saying the only word that is now taboo for some people to say. Rogan has now apologized, which is the first mistake, and now his blood is in the water. What happens next?

Who can say?

DOJ

On January 11, the Department of Justice announced a new domestic terrorism task force, because “We have seen a growing threat from those who are motivated by racial animus, as well as those who ascribe to extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies.”

I’m not jumping on a limb and being Nostradamus by betting that it’s nearly certain that the people who started CHAZ as an avowed foreign nation won’t be prosecuted. But if someone tries to lead a trucker’s strike like in Ottawa? You can bet that the DOJ, FBI, NSA and every other three-letter agency will be on them. Because terrorism really only applies to things the Right does.

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 down. January isn’t (usually) a big month for violence, so that’s to be expected. I would expect the next few months to remain calm as well, perhaps turning back up in April.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it’s headed upwards, fast. Joe has lost his base.

Economic:

The drop in economic confidence continued this month. Expect a bigger drop this month. The economy is falling apart.

Illegal Aliens:

This data was at record levels for this time of year. All-time record levels. Plus? Airflights for illegals. No DOJ task force for this . . .

Lessons from Canada

Canada has lived under very strict fear COVID restrictions. Trudeau has recently tightened the restrictions, especially with respect to truckers. You can look up the details, but to summarize: it was the last straw for many truckers.

As found, though in this case I don’t think he’s up to invading an ice cream store.

Truckers have a unique place in society. They provide that final lifeline on everything from the chlorine that the water treatment plant uses to food at Wal-Mart® to the toilet paper that everyone panic-bought in 2020. Many of them also own their own trucks. They work when they want to as owner operators.

As found.

Make them mad? Right now, hundreds of Canadian truckers have had enough, and are occupying Ottawa. How serious is Justine Trudeau taking this? He vanished like Saddam Hussein, but with better press coverage. He ran away, and left the Leftists of Ottawa to their own devices.

As found. I wonder what will happen to Justine’s son, Uday?

And they are upset. Apparently, their cats are of the very sensitive type (memes as found):

Also, the Leftists tried to set up a counter protest. /POL/ got into their communication channels, giving conflicting starting and ending times for the protest, and filling the protestors up with doubt, “Boy, that sure seems like a long time to protest, and it’s going to be cold out there. Don’t forget to dress in layers! I’ll be with you in spirit!”

As a lark, it has been a lot of fun for the Right, and already two provinces (they’re like states, but made of maple syrup) have indicated that restrictions are going away soon in those provinces. The convoy is working.

As such, the Ottawa police is now trying to crack down on the logistics of the truckers. Will it work? Maybe. Maybe not.

I think two lessons are that this will never, ever be allowed in the United States in a major Leftist city and will be censored by the major news media working in concert with .gov if it ever starts to develop. The crackdown would be ruthless, especially if it occurred in D.C. Leftists are as afraid of actual workers as they are of actual work.

As found. Also, Leftist logic thought process.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys (Jan 2022)…

NYC: https://twitter.com/i/status/1478006188856025097

NYC: https://twitter.com/AndrewPollackFL/status/1482023373165285379

Chicago: https://youtu.be/U1G2Gt loP0

Chicago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDN4S-mhplk

Detroit: https://youtu.be/C8ePWbzYTP8

Detroit: https://youtu.be/jv0LvsphFSA

Portland: https://youtu.be/TKnXY3pZWK8

LA: https://twitter.com/streetpeopleLA/status/1484350084439363586

LA: https://twitter.com/streetpeopleLA/status/1484356560956526593

San Jose: https://youtu.be/MfjkUJZFbl0

SF: https://twitter.com/i/status/1479164420148248576

Good Guys (Jan 2022)…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10402917/Two-teens-charged-murder-subway-attack-Good-Samaritan-killed.html

https://6abc.com/philadelphia-carjacking-driver-shoots-carjacker-fairmount-west-kensington/11452980/

One Guy

https://www.wpr.org/gun-kyle-rittenhouse-used-kenosha-shootings-be-destroyed

https://www.dailywire.com/news/kyle-rittenhouse-sits-down-with-candace-owens-discusses-future-plans-theres-going-to-be-some-accountability

Body Count (Jan 2022)

USA Surge 2021: https://invesbrain.com/states-investigating-surge-in-mortality-rate-among-18-49-year-olds-majority-unrelated-to-covid-19/

https://thelibertydaily.com/bombshell-cover-up-cancer-diagnoses-in-the-military-rose-over-three-fold-since-jabs-were-introduced/

USA Fentanyl 2021: https://secureservercdn.net/166.62.108.196/w7l.6b7.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/facts.pdf?time=1640209532

USA Weather 2021: https://twitter.com/NOAA/status/1480574295940161536

Chicago 2021: https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/violence.png?itok=BmL3yEVn

NYC 9 Days In 2022: https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/01/11/05/52781909-10389089-image-a-8_1641877588156.jpg

Philly “Safe Streets Violence Interrupter” : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts6XSYE4zNI

Blacks: https://www.unz.com/isteve/cdc-blacks-died-36-more-often-by-homicide-in-the-year-of-the-racial-reckoning/

Body Count (Snoop Dog “F**k The Police” Super Bowl Edition)

https://nypost.com/2022/01/29/snoop-dogg-at-super-bowl-halftime-show-becoming-even-worse-look/

https://nypost.com/2021/12/29/where-is-the-outrage-over-the-killing-of-keona-holley/

https://nypost.com/2022/01/06/cop-killed-with-own-gun-after-pleading-with-suspect-to-spare-life-prosecutor/

https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/world-news-chicago-female-police-officer-killed-one-wounded-in-traffic-stop-shooting/390867

https://www.foxnews.com/us/nyc-murderer-first-female-police-officer-paroled

https://jonathanturley.org/2021/12/23/the-potter-verdict-was-the-jury-right-but-the-law-wrong-on-culpable-negligence/

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/police-attacked-least-4-us-110120536.html

https://nleomf.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/2021-EOY-Fatality-Report-Final-web.pdf

Polled Lives Matter!!!

https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/brad-wilmouth/2022/01/02/did-gallup-end-most-admired-74-year-polling-tradition-avoid-trump

https://nypost.com/2022/01/02/34-percent-of-americans-say-violence-against-government-justified/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/1-in-3-americans-say-violence-against-government-can-be-justified-citing-fears-of-political-schism-pandemic/ar-AASld12

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/01/12/nearly-60-of-americans-worry-democracy-in-danger-of-collapse-poll-suggests/?sh=72ffc315483e

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/washington-secrets/democrats-ok-with-fines-prison-mandates-for-vax-deniers-poll

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/partner_surveys/jan_2022/covid_19_democratic_voters_support_harsh_measures_against_unvaccinated

https://www.theorganicprepper.com/survey-unvaccinated/

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

USA (MUST SEE): https://2000mules.com/

GA (MUST READ): https://www.truethevote.org/ttv-statement-regarding-georgia-ballot-harvesting-investigation/

GA : https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/georgia-opens-investigation-possible-illegal-ballot-harvesting-2020

GA :https://twitter.com/TalkMullins/status/1487299420752334848

GA : https://voterga.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Press-Release-VoterGA-Drop-Box-Custody-Chain-Analysis.pdf

GA : https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/huge-georgia-ballot-trafficking-whistleblower-admits-making-45000-stuffing-ballot-boxes-just-one-242-traffickers-possibly-1-million-ballots/

PA: https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/17/video-shows-pennsylvania-official-admitting-election-laws-were-broken-in-2020/

PA: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-s-nearly-2m-mail-in-pennsylvania-votes-in-2020-would-now-be-unconstitutional/ar-AATfqsq

TX: https://www.sos.texas.gov/elections/forms/phase1-progress-report.pdf

TX: https://www.theepochtimes.com/texas-audit-finds-over-11000-potential-non-citizens-registered-to-vote-other-problems_4188076.html

WI: https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/589714-judge-rules-absentee-ballot-drop-boxes-cannot-be-used-in-wisconsin?amp

WI: https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/10/how-a-mark-zuckerberg-funded-nonprofit-turned-wisconsin-blue/

CA: https://ktla.com/news/local-news/no-evidence-of-election-fraud-by-man-found-passed-out-with-300-recall-ballots-drugs-in-torrance-police/

USA: https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/09/politics/gop-election-voting-rights-battleground-states/index.html

USA: https://uncoverdc.com/2021/12/23/heritage-foundation-state-election-integrity-scorecard-puts-georgia-at-top/

USA: https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-judicial-nominee-said-proof-of-citizenship-is-voter-suppression

They Say It’s Your Birthday…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10391647/FBI-executive-assistant-director-stays-mum-Cruz-asks-agents-participated-January-6-riot.html

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/588446-division-reins-over-jan-6-anniversary

https://www.ajc.com/news/jimmy-carter-america-on-the-brink-of-a-widening-abyss/2ER2BJ2ZCJGQBBKHLUYSPPMRXU/

https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/17/democrats-are-priming-themselves-to-refuse-to-accept-any-election-defeats/

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2022/01/14/actor-nick-searcys-movie-capitol-punishment-is-the-best-doc-about-january-6-hed-know-he-was-there-n1549452

The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia…

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/01/11/remarks-by-president-biden-on-protecting-the-right-to-vote/

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bidens-disastrous-georgia-speech-threw-away-his-last-chance-to-start-anew/

https://www.dailywire.com/news/mcconnell-blasts-bidens-profoundly-unpresidential-rant-he-propagandized-against-his-own-country

https://www.foxnews.com/media/mike-huckabee-biden-insane-georgia-voting-rights-speech

https://thehiu.com/bidens-georgia-speech-was-a-breaking-point/

https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1481467050027466752%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_

https://jonathanturley.org/2022/01/11/democracy-autocracy-or-hypocrisy-biden-to-call-for-curtailing-filibuster-rule-in-reversal-of-long-held-position/

Disco Inferno:

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/589888-kyrsten-sinema’s-courage-washington-hypocrisy-and-the-politics-of-rage

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2022/january/10/we-need-a-revolution/

https://abcnews.go.com/US/oath-keepers-spokesperson-warns-wing-propaganda-dangerous-bullets/story?id=82094999

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/09/what-makes-riots-conspiracies-cabals-and-insurrections-good-or-bad/

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60036911

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/01/06/new-civil-war-about-what-exactly-526603

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/01/12/the-hysterical-fantasy-of-an-impending-civil-war/amp/

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jan/16/the-next-civil-war-stephen-marche-how-civil-wars-start-barbara-walter-review-nightmare-scenarios-for-the-us

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/americas-asymmetric-civil-war

https://www.fastcompany.com/90572489/u-s-election-maps-are-wildly-misleading-so-this-designer-fixed-them

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Brookings-2economies11-20a_0.png?itok=EO-pIuFl

The End Of The World

https://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2022/01/if-unrest-soars-in-america-will-looters.html

Pirates, Rail Looters, Fed Looters, And Bikini Economics

“Pirate Ghost would suggest that a pirate died and became a ghost, but a Ghost Pirate is a ghost that later made a conscious decision to be a pirate.” – South Park

What decongestant does the Federal Reserve© ban?  Sudafed™.

Most of the time when a train story hits the news, it involves the comically overloaded trains in India.  The typical headline in a newspaper (back when those existed) was on page 7, and went something like this:  Train Derails In India, 471,320 Dead.  The news story was typically right near, “Local Cat Makes Good!”

It’s been a while since I saw much about trains in the news.  Imagine my interest when I found out that people were hopping on trains in Los Angeles (Translation From Spanish:  Tarp City) and looting them.  What the Corsairs from Compton Boulevard are looking for is . . . merch.  Amazon® packages.  Best Buy™.  Nike©.

If Amazon® delivered by drone, for these folks that would just be skeet shooting, with prizes.

It’s really piracy on the rails.  Mobs attack the slow-moving trains and proceed to loot them.  They’ll load up on televisions and laptops and video game systems and almost everything that you can order online.  Except for books.  And, probably, work boots.

The fact that this is tolerated is a symptom that Los Angeles is now, officially, the Somalia of the West Coast.  There appears to be no effort to stop the mob, and no effort to arrest any participant.  Recent news reports would indicate that an ax-murderer, after arrest, would be given his (oops, California!) xir ax back after getting booked and not even have to post bail.

But try to smuggle a plastic straw in?  It’s off to Workers Leisure and Re-Education Camp #495 for you.

When you think about it, using a straw is just like snorkeling in reverse.

The fact that land pirates are actually a thing in 2022 means that, in Los Angeles at least, the rule of law has broken down completely in areas.  Thankfully, that hasn’t translated to other parts of the country, right?

Well, about the Federal Reserve® . . .

It’s not as if the Fed™ governors have been caught in a scandal where they unethically traded stocks.  Oh, they have?  Dallas Fed© President Robert Kaplan and Boston Fed™ President Eric Rosengren and Fed® Vice-Chairman Richard Clarida all resigned in disgrace after trading based on future Fed© decisions that hadn’t been made public?

Say it isn’t so!  Oh, wait, it’s completely so.  Apparently, the Fed© treats their “management” of fiscal policy just as seriously as the Watts Porch Pirates treat their “management” of Amazon® freight logistics.

Well, at least they’ve done well with the economy, preserving the purchasing power of money over time, right?

Of course . . . not.

I’d point out how bad this graph is, but somehow I don’t feel as sad with this one.

In reality, monetary policy since the Fed™ started has been to make your cash worthless, over time.  You can see what a great job they’ve done since 2000.  In effect, the Fed© has been in your bank account, robbing it bit by bit, just like the Hollywood Buccaneers have been boosting freight out of the train yard.  They just leave a bit less trash.

But certainly, they’ve been operating now as a sober bunch.

Ha!

No!  They’ve taken every Fed® interest rate record since 1955 and smashed it!  They are, absolutely provably, so drunk on Jack Daniels® that they can’t feel their collective jaws.  They are knee-walking, porcelain-grabbing drunk.

Wolfstreet.com called them . . . The Most Reckless Fed® Ever.  (LINK)

They put together a nice graph (below) that shows that if you take the Fed™ funds rate (what they charge to borrow money) and subtract inflation, we’re at a LIFETIME level of irresponsibility.  The Quantitative Easing (ahem, helicopter cash) and Stimulus Bills (ahem, more helicopter cash) have pushed inflation up.

The reckless bit is on the right.  No, farther right.  Yes, farther. 

So, all of the “Fight for $15” folks are quiet now, because whatever the minimum wage is, $15 is attainable doing temp work.  Everyone not making big bucks?  Inflation is eating the raises of most people.  So who’s winning?  I mean, besides the insider traders at the Fed™?

People who own stuff.  Inflation makes cash worth less, and eventually worthless.  Owning things makes sense in a world where cash is becoming worthless.  Who owns things?  Rich people.  They’ve done very, very well.  Why is Tesla®, which made 936,000 cars last year, has a market cap of $1.1 trillion dollars.  Doing the math . . . that has Tesla© worth $1,175,214 . . . per car they made.

Huh?  Honestly, it’s not a stock:  it’s a meme.

I guess people have to buy something.  Notice that Elon himself was selling his stock to convert it to (temporarily) cash to convert it to . . . stuff.  Even the tax hit wasn’t enough to deter him – he might well have the biggest tax bill of any individual in history this year.

Why?  Do you sell a stock that you think is going to go up?  No.  You sell a meme.  And let’s not talk about how the Fed© has force-fed banks billions of dollars to prop them up and increase their profitability.

I hear he wears Space-Axe® body spray.

So, we have pirates looting railcars to take home blenders and game controllers.  We’re not stopping them.

We also have much, much bigger thieves – the Freebooters of the Fed™ who have done their very best to, first by inflation, then by recession, to drain trillions of dollars of savings of average Americans, and it doesn’t even get higher up in the newspaper than an Indian train accident.

Looks like the D.A. isn’t prosecuting these guys, either.  Guess they haven’t tried to smuggle any plastic straws . . . at least then they’d get sent to Workers Leisure and Re-Education Camp #495.

BLM Has Killed More Blacks Than Lynching Has

“It doesn’t matter who we are, what matters is our plan.” – The Dark Knight Rises

What’s the difference between protestors in Hong Kong and Minneapolis?  In Hong Kong they protested against censorship.

I have written before about the Marxist origin of Black Lives Matter®.  That doesn’t appear to bother the news media, Leftists, or the corporations that shovel money into it like they’re feeding a machine.  Yes, Black Lives Matter™ is a machine, but it’s not quite the machine that the liberal wine-aunts that listen to NPR© think it is.

But challenge Black Lives Matter© while working for a major corporation, even in good faith?  That’s going to shorten your career.

Zac Kriegman worked for Thompson/Reuters®.  “Worked for” is the proper tense.  Kriegman had a bachelor’s in economics topped with a law degree from Harvard® and was working for Thompson/Reuters© leading their efforts in artificial intelligence.  His pronoun is:  “Was.”

A friend go fired from a keyboard factory for not putting in enough shifts.

Then he posted an essay on the internal servers.  You can read it here (LINK).  What was the sin he got fired for?  Objecting to the bias he saw at Thompson/Reuters™ and then, worst of all, proving via statistics that Black Lives Matter© and the Thompson/Reuters© narrative was . . . a lie.  A longer version of Kriegman’s story can be found here (LINK).  Thanks to Ricky for both of those links.

The results are clear.  According to the Tuskegee Institute (who apparently are the official counters of such things) a total of 3, 446 black people were lynched between 1882 and 1968.  Based on Kriegman’s data, it’s entirely likely that Black Lives Matter’s™ focus on “defunding the police” along with the Ferguson and Minneapolis Effects, that Black Lives Matter© killed more blacks in three years than lynching ever did in 86 years.

It is clear that facts like these have to be suppressed.  That’s why Zac Kriegman was fired.  At Thompson/Reuters™, the Truth doesn’t matter – just adherence to the Narrative.

But . . . why?

The answer is that the real goal (regardless of the stated goal) of Black Lives Matter© has nothing to with making the lives of black people better.  This is obvious from one initiative alone:  defunding the police.

No, no I really don’t.

I am skeptical of all police.  I tend to think that many police officers will do as they’re told, no matter who tells them, and no matter what they tell them.  History has proven that most cops will go collect guns from lawful owners or round up people for the “vaxx” camps if they’re told to.  Don’t believe me?  Check out Australia.

But if I were a cop in the liberal utopias where Leftists have put a target on my back, I’d do the bare minimum, while looking for a job anywhere outside places where arrests are irrelevant because the Soros-funded DA has installed a revolving door on the jail.  Oddly, this is exactly the desired result.  Soros wants chaos on the streets, and has found that cops won’t arrest people that won’t go to prison.  Those people are then left on the street, where they keep committing crimes until they get bored enough to kill someone.

Combine the following ingredients:

  • inflamed rhetoric noting that no problem in the black community is the responsibility of blacks,
  • occasional “martyr” victims that are selected not because of their innocence, but because the story (Ferguson) or video (Minneapolis) of the incident makes people really mad,
  • aggressive ignoring of the reality documented in FBI statistics that black neighborhoods are amazingly violent places – 58% of all people murdered in 2020 in the U.S. were black, and 54% of people arrested for murder in 2020 in the U.S. . . . were black, and
  • a news media, Thompson/Reutersâ„¢ included, that is all-in on the propaganda and what do you get?

More death.

Arguing that having fewer cops in the areas where most of the murders are taking place will make things better isn’t magical thinking – it’s intentional murder.  Regardless of the reasons that black people are killing themselves – having fewer cops around won’t help the situation.

According to BLM™, that’s okay.  The goal of Black Lives Matter© obviously has nothing to do with helping actual black people.  What is it, then, that they’re up to?

The real goal of Black Lives Matter® is to create enough discontent and pain in the black community so that they’ll accept any solution.  Of course, the solution that the Left proposes is based on increased discipline, improving morality, focusing on keeping families intact, creating a culture of personal responsibility, and rigorous academic performance.

Ha!  Just kidding!  It’s literally the opposite of all of those things.  The current Leftist solution is like trying to help Charlie Sheen via giving him more porn stars and cocaine.

Charlie’s tested positive for everything except the ‘rona . . . .

And companies that support BLM© are complicit.  In the case of Thompson/Reuters© they reported uncritically on false claim that BLM™ made.  This, of course, provided oxygen for the fire.  Large companies then threw on bushels of cash, which provided more fuel.  The result?

Thousands of people, most of them black, who would now be alive except for Black Lives Matter™ are now dead.   These people had been utterly abandoned by their local politicians, media, and the large companies that earn Social Justice® points by pandering to those same NPR© liberal wine aunts.

The goal is simple:   to create an army of discontent people to increase violence and chaos.  It’s always easier to destroy than to build – and this idea is to destroy everything, leaving an America that’s hollowed out – a place with no center.  That’s what Leftists are good at.

Building and creating?  Not so much.

But at least black people don’t have to worry about lynching now.  They can just worry about how Black Lives Matter™ is going to “help” them next instead.

Currently Reading:  The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu

Gold, Silver, And The End Of The World

“What do you know about gold, Moneypenny?” – Goldfinger

Why don’t pirates travel on mountain roads?  S’curvy.

A reader writes:  “. . . if you could explain to me the rationale behind buying gold or silver as a hedge against economic collapse, I would appreciate it.”  I answered by sending him bikini graph after bikini graph, but yet he persisted in wanting to know an actual answer.

I don’t think anyone will complain that this one is a repeat . . . .

He had me cornered.  I wrote to him (embellished for this post and clarified for readability):

Thank you for the question.  I promise to answer, just as long as you give my dog bag safely.  He may be old and one-eyed and have diabetes and alopecia . . . we call him, “Lucky.”

It’s good that he’s not a dinosaur – he’d probably be called an eyesaur. 

I thought that I had already answered this question and looked for the post.

As I’ve got over 1,000 up, I couldn’t find it after I looked for about 22 seconds.  Maybe I developed notes on it and never posted?  Maybe I’m just lazy at searching.  In the worst-case scenario, a previous version exists, and everyone just has to deal with this new, superior post.

The question is a subtle one.  The first part of the answer is the degree of collapse.  I’ll start out with this idea: how bad does it get?

  1. Another Boring Wednesday: Would I rather have a ton of gold on a Wednesday morning than not?  Of course.  But I’d probably worry about George Clooney and his wisecracking band of thieves breaking into Stately Wilder Mansion.
  2. Personal Economic Problems: Again, in a sequel, having that ton of gold is still great, but I still have that pesky George Clooney problem.  In reality, gold is somewhat less liquid than cash, but having a bunch of it is still nice.  Also, if you bought gold in 1990, you would have had zero profit on it until 2006.  This was mainly due to sane economic policy and high-interest rates that tamed inflation.

Or is this why they were always after his Lucky Charms®?

  1. Recession: What’s going on in the economy?  If you look closely, silver and gold actually dropped in value at the start of the Great Recession in the 2000s.  As people liquidated their “stuff” so they could still buy the G.I. Joe® with the Kung Fu™ grip for their kid at Christmas, the price actually dropped.  For a while.  Then the price jumped up when it became clear that the Fed® would print as much money as required to choke every person on the planet.  In the fiat world, gold and silver are something I’d look to have.
  2. Depression – 1930s Style: This is a hard analogy – back in the 1930s, the dollar was backed in gold, until FDR (press S to spit) stole the gold from the American people.  Now?  The dollar is nothing more than, to quote Aerosmith, “a lick and a promise.”  (See below)
  3. Weimar-Style Hyperinflation: I don’t think we’ll get here, until there’s a lack of faith in the dollar.  Brandon is doing his best to make Jimmy Carter look like a master of economics, so, if hyperinflation hits?  Gold is awesome, and you might be able to repay your mortgage with five or six pre-1965 silver quarters.  So, yes, gold and silver make sense.  A lot of sense.

In a Leftist world, everyone is a Billionaire.  And also starving.

  1. Country Collapse: What happens if the country ceases to be?  It has happened again and again through history, especially with large “empire-like” countries that don’t have any sort of ethnic commonality.  Japan will always be Japan because there are Japanese and it’s a nation, not a country.  China, likewise.  Without a functioning country, there is no nation to fall back on.  This is where we add another precious metal:    So, yes, gold and silver, but understand that it might be some time before it’s useful again.
  2. International Collapse: Rome provides a powerful example here.  In Great Britain, they’re constantly finding hordes of money – including silver money, and gold.  Why?  Because people stopped using it, and you can’t eat it.  Did that last forever?  Of course not, but 100 years is nearly long enough.  Lead is nice here, too.

Who sang “Can’t Touch This” for Caesar?  1100 Hammer.

  1. Civilizational Collapse: What happens if there’s no oil for the cars – anywhere?  What happens if we don’t have phosphorus for fertilizer?  Bad things.  Gold and silver might be helpful, but lead is much better here.  If the warlord wants your stuff and you can’t keep it from him, welcome to no longer having that stuff.
  2. A Kamala Harris presidency: Looks pretty much like number 8, but with more makeup.
  3. A Neutron Star Eating The Earth: I suggest investing in SpaceX®.

I think that we underestimate the likelihood of things getting really, really bad.  To give an example, I once worked at the headquarters of a big company.  They asked me to look at disaster recovery.  I looked at all of the natural hazards that might hit the company.  The most likely disaster would hit the headquarters once every three hundred years.

“Huh,” I said to my boss, foreshadowing future writing endeavors, “a new civil war is far more likely than that . . . I mean if the company lasts that long.  Companies go out of business all the time.”

He was not amused.  Corporations tend to not like actual reality to interfere in their projections.  But, I maintain I was right.  How many companies have ceased to exist – big companies – since 2000?  I’ll leave that work to the reader.  Enron®, anyone?

Country music and calculators are both produced by Texas instruments.

Listen, I don’t mean to sound paranoid, but banks are giving mortgages out at 3.3% and inflation is at 6%, which means that banks will lose money every year as long as inflation is a thing.  How can they do this?  Volume!

No, I’m kidding.  The Fed® is giving them tons of money to lend cheaply to keep housing prices up.  When mortgage rates go up?  Then the housing bubble bursts.  So, we could end up in Scenario 3., 5., or 6. very, very quickly.

Gold and silver (in my NON FINANCIAL ADVISOR) opinion are awesome in most scenarios.  If it devolves past the point where order matters at all, then it comes down to weapons, political connections, preps, and sheer dumb luck.  If nothing happens, then my kids will get to enjoy some shiny metals after I pass away.

What’s the best way to tune a bagpipe?  A pitchfork.

I would, however, not want to put all of my eggs in any one basket.  I will personally limit the amount of gold and silver I own to about 10% of my net worth.  Why?  Random number – not bad if things go well in the rest of the world and gold and silver don’t go up in value.  If things go really south, it’s a decent enough hedge to act as a parachute as the plane goes down in flames.

So, that’s my answer:  it depends.  What do you think?  What Scenario above is the most likely?  What’s missing?

Ohhh, Lucky, come here, boy . . . oh, wait, he’s deaf, too . . . .

(Appended Graph)

Predictions 2022: The Funniest Predictions You’ll See This Year

 

“Since when can weathermen predict the weather, let alone the future?” – Back to the Future

Hitmen sometimes make people tense.  Past tense.

Thankfully, by next week 2021 will be in the rear view mirror.  I’m hoping that 2022 will be better for everyone, but remember, when you say it, it sounds like 2020, too, so there is a chance that it will deteriorate faster into an incomprehensible disaster faster than a Joe Biden speech or a Hunter Biden crack weekend.  That being said, I managed to pull out the patented Wildervision™ Chronovisor 2000©, and have the following predictions for 2022.  Enjoy!

January

The big event will be the Supreme Court reviewing Joe Biden’s Federal mandates for “jabbing” people so that they can keep their jobs.  My prediction is this:  The Supreme Court (which is just regular court but with sour cream and tomatoes) will vote to uphold the mandate.  Here’s why:

All of the Leftist Supreme Court members plus John Roberts are all in favor of man-dates.  Justice Elena Kagan and Justice Sonia Sotomayor have not had man-dates in years, and are really aching for them and hope they are “hot.”  John Roberts approves of man-dates on principle, because, “love is love, or at least that’s how the NSA® tells me to vote.”

I suck at playing the trumpet, which is probably why.

The surprise swing vote will be Justice Amy Coney Island Barrett Browning.  She will twist her hair and indicate that, you know, with all of the lonely nights at the Supreme Court, “well, a Justice has needs, needs mind you for a man-date.”

In a surprise move, Justice Clarence Thomas will assume his final form (The Thomas-Hulk) and throw the man-date approving justices into an orbit where they come close to touching the Sun.  It’s really cool.  His robes split open and everything.

The orbiting Justices will still not be as hot as Dead Justice Ginsburg, who still can’t get the sulfur smell out of her robes.  The Justices will return and try to form The Justice League©, but be sued by Warner Brothers®.

February

The groundhog in Minsk will see his shadow, which means that it will only be six weeks of offensive required for the Russians to take over the tasty bits of Ukraine that they want.  When confronted by NATO, Vladimir Putin replies, “Oh, Crimea river,” while riding a bear equipped with hypersonic nuclear missiles through a forest on his way to invent a sport-utility vehicle made from combining a T-72 tank undercarriage combined with a Holiday Inn Express®, which used 458 gallons of diesel per mile.

When all you have is 45,000 tanks, every problem looks like a problem a tank would solve.  Which is (honestly) almost every problem, ever.

Also, Bill Belichick’s Tom Brady Clone© defeats Tom Brady in Superbowl LVII™.  Belichick’s postgame comments are short, merely noting that he has seven thousand Tom Brady clones and is planning on living forever in a volcanic island somewhere in the Pacific with seven thousand hot, sweaty Tom Brady clones.

March

COVID variant “eeny, meeny, miny, moe” appears in Australia.  As there were no tigers available, there are no infections.  Australian lawmakers are incensed, as they had planned to charge all “unjabbed” infected $50 (Australian dollars) every day when they put them into concentration leisure camps.  As $50 Australian is only enough for one Chicken McNugget™, it is estimated that the lack of tigers cost Australia up to seven Happy Meals®.

The Australians kidnap Harvard™ students to fill the concentration leisure camps, having them fight off against vegetarian Cross-Fit™ enthusiasts every week in cage matches to see who is the most annoying.

Reprinted with permission.

Also:  Russia increases natural gas prices to France.  France surrenders.  Russia fails to accept surrender, noting the number of berets, cigarettes, and baguettes of bread required could not be supported by the Soviet Russian economy and that they cannot make as many burkas as are required by France.

April

The Sun emits the largest solar flare since the 1859 Carrington Event, but damage is focused around Detroit and Chicago in the American Midwest.  The event destroys the electrical grid and moves both Detroit and Chicago into Stone Age conditions.  It is estimated that the Stone Age conditions are so much better than what was there, that over $15 billion in improvements have been made.

May

Bill Gates declares, “The War on COVID is over!  We have defeated the dread ‘Rona!”  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation© announces it has a new focus, getting Bill hot girlfriends in their early twenties.  The new plan is The Gates’ Dates Initiative™.

Bill happily announces it, “If you don’t offer up your attractive daughters to me, remember:  I have been working on smallpox and anthrax and lots of other diseases that end in ‘x’ and can ruin you all!”  Jeff Bezos announces that he is “all-in” providing that Gates will allow the tandem initiative, “Bimbos for Bezos®”.

How can you tell Gates released COVID?  Just like Windows®, every month there’s an updated version that installs itself automatically without your permission.

Both Gates and Bezos are proud to announce that they have hired O.J. Simpson as their security coordinator, noting that “O.J. will allegedly take a stab at any problem we have.”

June

The Federal Reserve™ announces that inflation of more than 20% per month is “mostly solved” and that they plan to stop printing money and giving it to banks “just as soon as we run out our intense desire for piles of cocaine and attractive hookers.”

My name is Jerome Powell.  Say hello to my little friend, infinite money printing.

Donald Trump emerges from Florida to note, “My vaccine is the best vaccine.  I bathe in it.  Those who have avoided it?  Sad.  Sometimes, when I’m bored?  I inject it into my eyes.  And I have the best eyesight.  Perfect.”

Also, it’s “blah blah blah, Black Lives Matter© riots, billions in damage, hundreds dead, for some reason everyone but Black Lives Matter® people are to blame” season.

July

Joe Biden has regressed to the point where coherent speech now eludes him.  “Jo-jo gotta go-go now anna maka doodie INNNA SINK,” “ICE CREAM YABBA,” and “The need to increase illegal immigrants and social program spending” are now the topics of his increasingly deranged addresses to the American people.

Kamala Harris responds, “Ha ha ha!  You know (ha) Joe!  He’s (ha) always being (ha) Joe!”  An ABC News© poll places Biden in a heated competition with houseplants and ice cubes for “most coherent political speech” of 2022.

August

Crowds of Pfizer®-jabbed Americans now have been reported to have developed, “An insatiable appetite for human blood – the untainted blood of those not exposed to the COVID jabs.”  Anthony Fauci insists, “This is a completely normal side effect.  You expect people whose DNA has been modified by a largely untested agent to want to drink massive amounts of human blood in a vain attempt to make themselves normal again.  Which is, normal.  Wear a mask or six.”

Not mine.  I’m sad they didn’t mention vampirism.

Other noted and “completely expected” side effects of the “jab”, according to Fauci, include:  death, inability to cast a reflection in a mirror, extreme intolerance of sunshine, and the ability to turn into a Wuhan bat and fly large distances.  The unvaccinated are apparently to blame.

September

Skipped.  I’m pretty sure the United Nations outlaws it or something.

October

The Harvest Moon is upon ye!  Beware!  The veil between this world and the next is thinnest here.  There are times when ye cannot ken the vast forces that an uncaring cosmos has coalesced into beings that exist in the deep and dark space beyond the stars, where even light cannae go!

These beings walk, caring only in your obedience and worship as their corrupted thoughts infect all of spacetime and begin to slowly chip away at your everyday reality, making you doubt in your very sanity.  They seek only the vast amounts of power that they can siphon from your suffering, and would gladly make your existence from here to the last energy available in the universe is spent one of agony that they can feed on.

H.P. Lovecraft wrote a cookbook, the Necronomnomnomicon.

Also, it’s October so make sure you change out your smoke detector batteries and don’t forget to go see the latest Disney® movies!

November

The Democrats lose all of their seats in the House of Representatives (except for the seats from California and New York City) as their mid-term strategy of “Appease the Great Horrific Beasts from Beyond the Cosmos Through Your Eternal Suffering” strategy (mostly) backfires.  Nancy Pelosi is outed as a trans-dimensional demon that sucks the souls of the unborn for immortal life, and gains three points in her latest election.

Democrats claim that they will pass laws so that psychics will be allowed to fill in ballots for “people who thought about voting but were too lazy to actually vote,” because “every thought about voting matters.”

December

December is filled with surprises:

  • Elon Musk announces he has created a time machine. His stated goal is to use it to go back and, “nail Farrah Fawcett when she was really hot.  And alive.  Or at least really hot.”

Yeah, I know, this joke has been done to death.

  • Wilder, Wealthy and Wise© author John Wilder is Time Magazine’s® Man of the Year for being so very awesome, funny, and predicting the “whole vaccinated are now vampires that can only be killed by making them sign up for time-share condominiums” plague.
  • Donald Trump begins selling time-share condominiums, noting, “these are the best condominiums ever. You’re sure it kills them, you know, the vampires, right?”  No one reminds him Trump is a vampire.  Trump buys six condominiums, after asking Musk if can do anything about Natalie Wood.
  • China announces that their relationship with Taiwan is over. “You know Taiwan, it wasn’t you, it was me.  Cheer up.  I’m sure you’ll find someone.  There are lots of great hegemonies out there.”
  • Justice Clarence Hulk-Thomas begins his Justice Tour, and announces, “If I come down your chimney, you’d better pray.”
  • Hollywood announces that they are ready to make the first biopic of Joe Biden, “Ima maka dudie,” starring Ron Perlman as Biden.