Weimerica – Page 6 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Internet Is Crappier. On Purpose.

“It’s Dr. Seuss’s birthday. Google™, even though you’ve enslaved half the world, you’re still a damn fine search engine.” – The Simpsons

I’ve had millions of hits, but none of them from Best Korea.

Today I had to spend an hour searching for PEZ® dispensers honoring the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial. Amazingly, despite the time I spent looking, no one that I could find has made a PEZ™ dispenser to honor this historic moment. To me, it was amazing that Amber’s lawyers worked so long and hard to prove that Depp was utterly innocent.

Google™ used to be better. I remember it wasn’t a little better, it was a lot better than it is today.

To be fair, I’ve mainly stopped using Google© as my search engine of choice. Besides being horrible, unethical, demonic, GloboLeftistElite shills, they also have futzed with their algorithm so much that when I do a search for common phrases that are pretty unique to my site, I don’t show up on the first two pages.

Go figure. I mean, horrible, unethical, demonic, GloboLeftistElite? I might be able to deal with that. But kill my search results?

They’re dead to me.

The FBI recently announced that Hillary Clinton’s laundry did itself.

Search had long been skewed by Google®, but the autistic programmers that originally put it all together really took that “Don’t Be Evil©” original mission statement to heart. They wanted to create great search results. They even went as far as to make sure there was a firewall between their search people and their ad people so that search was preserved.

Oh, sure, they put their thumb down as hard as they could to get Hillary selected in 2016. Heck, one researcher thought that over 3,000,000 votes were impacted by their search results, alone. Hmmm, Donald Trump is put on trial for forking over $130,000 to a tramp via a shady lawyer (yeah, he has horrible taste in people) but Google™ subverts their entire search platform in favor of a candidate?

No crime here. Move along, citizen.

Regardless, the search engine was still pretty good. As the newfound desire of the GloboLeftElite to clamp down on speech, starting about 2017, Google™ seemed to shy away from that. Again, the search results in 2017 were pretty good.

If Elon Musk really does send thousands of people to Mars, he’s either a genius or the most creative serial killer of all time.

But around 2019, the ad executives at Google™ decided that, perhaps, the search results were too good. You can read an article about that here (LINK).

The problem was that if the search engine were too good, that meant fewer searches. Fewer searches meant fewer ads. Fewer ads meant less money. The paradox was, the better Google™ got at search, the less money they made from ads.

The result was the same as at most businesses when money meets principles: money wins. Google™ searches were “encrapulated” so that they were crappier. More irrelevant sites should show up in a search. Oh, and the ads? They weren’t getting enough clicks. Solution? Make it less visible that they’re ads – make them look like legitimate search results.

But I did not know that the IRS now accepts Apple® gift cards!

Indian scammers *love* this, since now they can buy an ad, redirect people to their scam website, and get the scam going.

In a recent example, I did a search for a fairly unusual phrase, put quotes around it, and hit “go”. My quotation marks around the exact phrase I was looking for were utterly ignored. The results were . . . entirely encrapulated.

I finally remembered where the quote came from, a website that was now dark, but that someone had resurrected it elsewhere. Boom, there it was, the exact phrase (it was an article title) and I was in business. Google™, however, had ignored my “quotation marks” and my

-ignore

-results

-with

-these

-words and instead gave me a mishmash of crap that still included the trash I tried to weed out.

Now major search engines (Google©, Bing®, DuckDuckGo™) are giving only answers from the mainstream media, especially with certain topics – politics being one of them. The beauty of the Internet, circa 2005, is that the mainstream media hadn’t figured it out, so great content with dissenting voices was given a huge platform.

If NPR™ started a metal band, would it be called, “All Things Dismembered”?

Remember when Google™ used to say, “About 1,242,400 matches”? That’s gone. Google™ has stopped showing the number of pages, no doubt after people figured out that only about 225 results are ever shown.

Of course, NBCNESPNPR© has a lot of money riding on being able to provide curated news to you for fun, profit, and control – so search engines censoring any idea that is contrary to The Message is their goal. The major search engines seem to be on board with this.

This is also a major reason that comments are now dead on many websites, because giving the people who read the encrapified news are often embarrassed by that pesky Truth. Why allow comments at CNN™, when someone can come and make The Message look silly with just a few words?

Pressure has been specifically put on several sites, including Unz™, where unregulated commentors have caused Big Search to blacklist them killing their traffic from search. Oops, BIPOClist them. In the case of Zero Hedge™ (and The Federalist™), Google Ads™ were cancelled until they controlled their comments.

Yandex.com is better in many regards to Google©, even though it is Russian owned. When I did a search on Google™ for “Civil War Weather Report” – I was buried so deep that I missed it as I went by – over thirty items in front of my pages, which have nearly that exact title. On Yandex®? I’m SEVEN of the top ten results, like I used to be back before 2020, when the big political censorship bug hit all of the major search engines.

What’s the difference between bigfoot and Amber Heard? Johnny Depp never found bigfoot’s poop in his bed.

I guess that if I use Yandex© from time to time, well, then the FSB as well as the NSA will know that I’m searching for Amber Heard PEZ© dispensers. I couldn’t find a set with Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, but I did find one set consisting of Jesus, Amber Heard, and Donald Trump’s ex-lawyer, Micheal Cohen? I guess they were in a set because they all got nailed on the cross.

Well, to be fair, two of them were nailed on the cross-examination . . . .

Economic Doom? You’re Soaking In It.

“Two Purple Hearts – Leningrad and Siberia. Youngest man to be decorated by the president. You robbed the Federal Reserve Depository. Life sentence, New York Maximum Security Penitentiary. I’m ready to kick your ass out of the world, war hero.” – Escape From New York

Elon bought a coffee company and then made it a cryptocurrency. Yup, StarbuX®.

I’m a bit under the weather (sniffles). The good news is that some of the memetic content/graphs I found on the Internet about the current economy probably speak mostly for themselves. So, comments may be shorter than usual. I guess I’ll offer you this shorter post and an IOU for a longer one sometime in the future when I sober up get better.

First off – the dollar and gold used to have (depending on the era) a very similar volatility – at one point dollars were gold. What if the dollar was more volatile than gold, for the first time in 45 years??

Normally, longer term bond and notes have higher interest rates than shorter ones. The reason is uncertainty – if I was going to borrow money for thirty years, there’s more risk of crazy things happening, like Civil Wars or George Lucas selling Star Wars™ to Disney© in a thirty-year time span than in a three month time span. But when things get uncertain, that ration flips. If you look below, note that even a small inversion is a strong, strong signal of an impending recession. Well.

How bad has Biden been? Median mortgage payments (average selling price and current interest rates) are higher than Hunter Biden at a Burning Man®.

Homeowners aren’t the only ones paying huge interest payments. Here’s what’s happening on the national debt:

But it didn’t have to be that way. If someone remotely intelligent was in charge at Treasury, it wouldn’t be an issue at all. Don’t know where this snip came from, but it’s spot on:

Janet should be managing a grade school lunch kitchen. How deep does the rot run in the Banking Industrial Complex? O’Keefe tells us tons with one of his people hacks:

Thankfully the Fed™ has infinite money to lend. Or, at least the balance sheet shows that. In this case, this shows the economy as needing three times as much cash injected into the system as in 2008 to prop it all up and keep everything from draining into the abyss. In this case, the big vertical line represents the Silicon Valley Bank© failure.

That happened because Silicon Valley Bank™ had a lot of low interest, long term assets. Let’s just say I’m happy with my 4% mortgage right now, since I actually lose money by paying it back, since I can get 5%+ from banks. Silicon Valley Bank© had lots of crappy, long positions, and exploded.

Silicon Valley Bank? You’re Soaking In It.

When that happened, I wrote (link above) that I really expected that the vibrations would shake the system into a bigger failure by that October – this stuff takes a while to propagate. Instead, the Fed pulled a very cunning move: it printed buttloads of cash, allowed the banks to deposit the crap they had with the Fed™ and then the Fed™ took the losses. Of course, since they haven’t sold the crap the banks gave them, those are “realized” yet, so those losses are like a girlfriend so ugly you make her hide in the closet when your friends come over.

In addition to that, the Fed© has also lost at least $161 billion, according to the Fed©. Total? A trillion? Who knows? It’s not like anyone’s counting.

Back in the Before Time, the Fed™ never bought the debt of the United States. Why would they? They debt of the United States was to Ma and Pa Citizen, central banks all around the world, and, (oddly) to the United States when it spent the Social Security funds on Popcorn, PEZ™, Pantyhose, and Pachyderm Rides. Yup, the United States would spend the Social Security cash, and then write itself an IOU and put it (seriously!) into a filing cabinet in D.C.

Can you imagine a job that’s more futile? It’s like I wrote myself an IOU for stealing money from my kid’s college fund to buy beer, and then made my kid file the IOU, knowing full well that the file would experience “surprise combustion” in the backyard fire pit when I sobered up.

You really should be concerned. Unless you want to send me your cash so I can send you an IOU.

I promise I won’t blow it on Popcorn, PEZ™, Pantyhose, and Pachyderm Rides. Thankfully, people are waking up to the scam:

Revenge of the NEET

“I wanted to send my kids to college. It’s, like, $200 a year!” – Unfrosted

But I do have degrees in Mike Rowe Economics and Mike Rowe Biology.

NEET is Internet slang for “Not in Employment, Education, or Training” – in other words, “stays a home and smokes weed and plays video games”.

Mike Rowe, the Dirty Jobs guy, spent time noting last year that even with unemployment below 4%, 7 million men between the ages of 25 and 54 aren’t in the work force at all.

Now, I would hate to bring up the points that if our nation:

sends all the factory jobs overseas,
imports millions of foreigners with H1B visas (95,000 a year, minimum, since 2006, and more going back before that), or
just like Google®, cut hundreds of highly-skilled technical jobs in the United States and offshore them to Mexico and India,

then maybe, just maybe, the job market actually sucks because the wages are depressed to the point where living conditions at those wage levels are literally third world.

They’re not send us their best, or their best navigators, but I wonder if the repairs will be riveting. (meme used with permission)

Why would people put up with that? The market.

An example I read recently was of a person from India claiming that the only way they could find a place to live (this was in Canada) was in a bed in a kitchen in a two-bedroom apartment where six other Indian families were living. Admittedly, this is probably an upgrade from living in a slum in Mumbai, but these six families each pay a sixth of the rent. If a typical Canadian family wanted to rent that apartment and each Indian family was making $300 payments, the Canadians would have to cough up $1800.

That’s why people are tenting it – tents are better (marginally) to the American psyche than living with six other families in a condition where “squalor” would be an upgrade.

Another example?

When I was a kid, delivery work was for kids. Sixteen-year-olds were the ones frying Big Macs® and driving pizza from the Pizza Den to people’s houses.

Now?

Doordash® is now an adult job and everyone I see running the windows of the fast-food places has been voting for a big chunk of this century.

The United States is slipping quickly (and then, I fear, all at once) into a third world economy. To be clear, I’m not blaming those attempting to get to a better place, but it would be magical thinking to believe that once they got here and were a majority that they’d not immediately turn the United States into just another version of their homeland. You know, the one they fled.

Biden can’t stop doing connect-the-dot puzzles even though he can’t finish one. I guess Biden just doesn’t know where to draw the line. (meme as found)

But some of them aren’t working at all. And of those men that aren’t working, a huge number of them are white guys. It turns out that all, and I mean all, of the job growth since Corona™ became something other than a beer, went to dudes that weren’t white. In fact, the number of white people in the workforce dropped while Joe Biden “created” all of these jobs.

They were replaced. On any job where there is a remotely credible alternative with some sort of “diversity” score based on: a sexual fetish, being “female”, missing one of their six spleens, race, ethnicity, or religion. Of course, white, Christian and male is the opposite of diverse even though that category is only 6% or less of all of the humans we know of in the Solar System, excluding Phobos.

With things like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) actively putting up barriers to hiring (or keeping) white guys, I’m not surprised that many have just given up. They are pretending right now that that DEI is going away, but in reality, they’re keeping it but just naming it other things. “People and the Planet,” anyone? (Yes, it’s real.) Their goals really haven’t changed.

A lot of companies have women as DEI executives. I guess because it’s cheaper. (meme as found)

The big problem is that Identity is now more important than Competency. Think: Chernobyl 2.0, brought to you by DEI. Why no DEI in the NFL®? People actually care about meritocracy in football players, I guess.

Also, Automation is real. Factories of almost any type, when compared by their counterparts of 1960, are much more highly automated. A guy named Fred walking around to check temperatures on thermometers to make sure the boiler doesn’t suddenly wipe Peoria off the map has been replaced with sensors that feed pressure, temperature, and flowrates back to computers that automate the process. Fred’s out of a job, and, if those boiler automation systems weren’t programmed in India (looking at you, Boeing®) then Peoria is still safe.

Except for Fred, who doesn’t have that job anymore. A.I. is coming for lots and lots of other jobs. Starting now. According to Indeed®:

Software development jobs are down 51.3%,
Information Design down 44.3%
IT Operations and Helpdesk down 33.5%
Industrial Engineering down 30.3%

Are all of these jobs replaceable by A.I.? Of course not. But 35.3% of HR jobs (same study) apparently are.

I’m not a NEET, but I’m sure it’s easier being a NEET without a family. No particular requirement to have shelter other than couch surfing, and some NEETs work for a couple of months during the year and then goof off, smoke weed, and play video games during the rest of the time.

And you can do both of these things in a video game, while stoned. (meme as found)

Families have always been the nucleus that keeps men showered and shaved, but without them, men give up. It’s not like they can afford a family, either. Housing prices and interest rates are now high enough in most metro locations that most young families are effectively locked out of homeownership. The price to income ratio has doubled since 1985 nationally – homes are now twice as expensive as 1985 compared to median family incomes. Add in 7%+ interest rates, and you’ll see why the middle class has caused Red Lobster to go bankrupt.

Who knew we’d live to see so many movies come true? (meme as found)

In reality, there’s not a labor shortage – there’s only a labor shortage at the wages companies are willing to pay, and a ludicrous inflation of the value of women so that what they bring to the table (for kids) doesn’t equal what they have to put. NEETs don’t really care about either. They’ve got their weed, couches, and video games.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Time And Temperature

“Hey, come on. You divorced? You Separated? She beat you up?” – Die Hard

My book on clocks finally arrived. It’s about 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 V, Issue 12

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

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – Clock of Doom Setting– Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Talking About The Inevitable – 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.

Clock of Doom Setting

Klaus really rocks that Klingon cosplay?

I’m keeping the clock at stage 8 this month. But last month there was the comment from Aesop (LINK) that I promised to address this month, so here we are. The critical comments are in italics.

You’re still vastly over-selling the case. We’re at a 5 to a 6, at worst.

Things are neither wider nor deeper, just more widely and repetitively reported.

That’s a sign of desperation by the minions of Evil, not dominance.

Things are ugly. (Really ugly, if you want to use 1982, or 1962 as benchmarks. Which is why you shouldn’t.) But they’re not out of control, by any stretch. They haven’t turned up the burner, and the water isn’t anywhere near getting to frog-boiling range. Yet. That may (probably will) change. Perhaps quite rapidly (but that’s been true for ages). But until it does change, you really should throttle this back some.

Calling things an 8, at the current time, is gross overstatement.

This is a 100% fair criticism. I am certain we are, at minimum, at a 6 (People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology. Might move from communities or states just because of ideology).

Why?

I know multiple people who have fled states merely for ideological reasons – the Red folks are leaving the Blue states, the GloboLeftists are leaving the Red states and taking their guns with them, to go and live in states that actually value the Second Amendment.

I just flew into Australia, and boy are my arms confiscated.

The GloboLeftists leaving Red states isn’t as big, because (at least now) the GloboLeftists are tolerated in Red states. You can have a “Biden” sign in your front yard and no one will vandalize the place. This is mostly true.

There is a paradox of these places: If you live in the parts of America where it’s likely that you’ll need to use force for self-defense, you also live in a part of America where the District Attorney will charge you, and the jury will convict you for using self-defense. If you live in the parts of America where it’s unlikely you’ll need to use force for self-defense, you also live in the parts of America where the odds are they’ll give you a medal instead of indicting you. If indicted, the odds are nearly zero that any jury would convict you,

People on the TradRight see that, and they’re moving.

So, 6 is the floor. Is it also the ceiling? My logic says no, and here’s why:

Most Civil War violence is homicide.

A large portion is because the state allows or encourages it to happen. It’s not tanks, it’s not fighter jets, it’s people killing people – US Civil War 1.0 was an anomaly, mostly. Out in Missouri, though, there were many blood feuds that only glancingly involved politics. Ditto the Balkans, where neighbors just started killing neighbors due to ethnicity or due to them being middle class. Ditto the Indonesian civil war, where it was mainly just homicides based on opportunity, not based on political reasons.

Dali’s brother was a really good boxer. His name was Muhamma.

Regardless, there is currently an increasing amount of violence that is well tolerated, as long as it is perpetrated on people who probably vote on the Right. The January 6 protesters were charged in ways that strain any sort of claim of fair justice. The actually violent and felonious Black Lives Matter™ protests and Antifa® protests had nary an arrest, and of those arrested, the punishments for things like assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder, and actual murder were not handed down. Most protesters (of the GloboLeft variety) were just ignored.

They got the message. Even now, violence is 100% tolerated by the GloboLeftElite Soros District Attorneys and their “catch and release” program for violent felons. In 2011, Syria released all of the violent prisoners to act as a counterbalance to peaceful protestors. This is a known strategy. Civil War 2.0 won’t look like Civil War 1.0, and it will be a far, far dirtier thing, and we may never see a single uniformed conflict.

Where do football players get fresh uniforms from? New Jersey.

In my mind, that brings us to an 8. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.

I see Aesop’s point, and, though we may differ, I’ve got to make my call, and I’m sticking with an 8. If we see any meaningful attempt to back down the violence in GloboLeftist areas, I’ll rachet it down accordingly.

Violence and Censorship Update

Let’s start with Elon Musk. A judge in some place called Australia seemed to think that Australia controls the media in the United States, and, heck, maybe interstellar space for all I know. She ordered Elon Musk’s company, X™ to stop showing a video of an adherent of the Religion of Peace stabbing a Christian priest during a sermon. Elon (predictably) told her to shove it.

Microsoft® has likewise decided that games should only have women in them that look like sacks of potatoes. The good news is that Amy Schumer isn’t doing much, so she should be okay to step in as a model.

And, if you thought that you could own and operate a business and not hire criminals? I guess you didn’t figure on 2024. A convenience store is being sued by the Justice Department for not hiring criminals. I didn’t know Hunter needed a job that badly.

And, if you thought that having a bridge named after the guy who wrote the National Anthem was not unreasonable, well, they’re trying to disappear him from history.

Finally, the FISA program was not only extended, but expanded. Now the NSA has the power to look into, essentially, the whole Internet. Go figure.

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again. And it’s gonna get worse.

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, expected with cooler weather. Probably quiet until June or July.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is slightly up. I expect this fall to be a bit more crazy.

Economic:

Economic numbers are down a bit. But prices are up.

Illegal Aliens:

Second Highest April. Ever. But the normies are waking up.

Talking About The Inevitable

One of the clues that people are going to have a divorce is that they start talking about it. A recent Rasmussen Reports® poll shows that:

41 percent of voters are thinking that there is a new civil war due sometime in the future,
16 percent felt it would occur in the next five years,
37 percent of voters felt civil war is more likely if Biden remains in the White House after the election,
36 percent of Alaskans want to leave the Union,
31 percent of Texans want to leave the Union,
29 percent of Californians want to leave the Union, and
28 percent of New Yorkers want out.

When I started writing the Weather Report in 2019 (this is the 60^th monthly issue!) I stated that I felt that the very first possible time that a civil war would occur would be 2025. I felt the halfway point and most likely time would be 2032, and the latest date would be (I think this is right) 2037. There are reasons for those years, tying to several large trends in economics, world power dynamics, hordes of illegal aliens, and other demographics.

Back in 2020, Scott Adams predicted we wouldn’t have a civil war in the near term. His reason? “We don’t want one.” I think, four years later, we’re getting closer to wanting one. Remember: it doesn’t require everyone to agree to a civil war, what it requires is a committed minority. John Adams, who knows more about this than I do, noted that he thought about a third of Americans were in favor of the Revolution, which was just a civil war that we happened to win. Adams felt another third didn’t want war, and another third were loyal to the king.

The numbers above are showing that we’re at danger levels of support for a major change, and I think next year takes us into the period where civil war becomes possible – with the peak probability still sitting at 2032. Here in 2024, though, it’s a nice, cool night and tomorrow’s weather will be perfect. A storm may be coming, but tonight I’ll prepare. And enjoy.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/TTEcclesBrown/status/1779532832056180756

https://twitter.com/TTEcclesBrown/status/1776630901277126892

https://twitter.com/i/status/1779690452398330155

https://twitter.com/i/status/1782456547525685499

https://twitter.com/GangHits/status/1784616636735004918

https://twitter.com/i/status/1783536135085388174

Good Guys

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13371699/UNC-protest-Israel-frat-American-flag-protected.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0gKDgYHvRA

https://nypost.com/2024/05/02/us-news/bill-ackman-donates-10k-to-unc-frat-bros-who-shielded-us-flag-from-anti-israel-mob/

https://www.newsweek.com/unc-frat-brothers-flag-donations-update-1897055

One Gal

https://twitter.com/Red_Pill_US/status/1779348493490131392

Body Count

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GLGuBnfbMAA2xEN?format=jpg&name=large

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GLGFWhwXsAAinOO?format=jpg&name=900×900

https://www.thirdway.org/report/the-21st-century-red-state-murder-crisis

https://www.shewon.org/

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2024/04/09/transgender-surgery-in-military-paid-by-taxpayers

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-births-alarmingly-slide-lowest-level-1979-failing-exceed-replacement-rate-gfc

https://www.lifenews.com/2024/04/25/americas-fertility-rate-hits-record-low-as-planned-parenthood-abortions-hit-record-high/

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1775928212805103945

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/ar-BB1llO5L

Vote Count

https://twitter.com/Rogue_Outlaw17/status/1775851708436078957

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2024/04/24/poorly-managed-toddlers-are-running-elections

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1778840719387488583

https://twitter.com/amrenewcitizen/status/1774806979367641474

https://www.newsweek.com/fani-willis-dealt-blow-new-testimony-1886322

https://twitter.com/CannConActual/status/1773089354635698446

https://twitter.com/Rasmussen_Poll/status/1774799076707422307

https://twitter.com/TrueTheVote/status/1775625397431877718

Civil War

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/alex-garland-civil-war-explosive-083228878.html

https://americanmind.org/salvo/extremism-on-the-ballot/

https://alt-market.us/the-political-left-has-proven-beyond-a-doubt-that-they-are-authoritarians/

https://www.axios.com/2024/04/09/america-politics-divided-polarization-data

https://apnews.com/article/ap-poll-democracy-rights-freedoms-election-b1047da72551e13554a3959487e5181

https://metro.co.uk/2024/04/18/second-civil-war-becoming-increasingly-plausible-insurrections-likely-20671654/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/1-in-5-americans-think-violence-may-solve-u-s-divisions-poll-finds

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/41–of-americans-say-second-civil-war-likely-in-next-5-years

https://www.nysun.com/article/100-million-americans-say-civil-war-could-rip-country-apart-within-5-years-survey-suggests

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2024/04/06/america-is-hurling-toward-a-full-blown-hot-civil-war/

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/26/what-a-real-civil-war-would-do-to-the-us-economy/

Forbidden Economics: The GloboLeft Versus The Good

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

My neighbor has had a bad financial crisis. He has to drive a car without a top and his car doesn’t have a roof.

Monday’s post was about Forbidden Science. These are inconvenient truths that simply don’t fit into the ideology of a GloboLeftist. In the tradition of the very best GloboLeftists, whenever this inconvenient set of facts conflicts with their ideology, they do what rational people have always done – they consult how the facts disagree with their ideology and change their positions. Nah, just kidding. Instead GloboLeftists ignore them and stick their fingers in their ears and yell loudly “I’m not listening to you! I’m not listening to you! I’m not listening to you!”

Wednesday is the day I typically post about economics and related issues, so what better topic than Forbidden Economics? Just like on Monday, I’ll start with things that the GloboLeft actually believes and then make fun of them, primarily because they deserve it.

Me? I say bring back the positive power of bullying.

I was a bully to this orphan kid in school. I mean, it wasn’t like he was going to tell his parents.

GloboLeftists believe that Modern Monetary Theory isn’t just made-up justification for “I spend what I want”.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has quietly taken the place of any sort of rational thinking. When I first wrote about it, it seemed so fringe and tongue in cheek that I was shocked anyone smarter than AOC would fall for it. I know, I know, that leaves about 85% of the country, but the GloboLeft has willingly and enthusiastically embraced MMT.

What is MMT? It’s the theory that, since money is entirely made up in the first place, that it doesn’t matter how much you print. Yes, you read that correctly. The idea is that money is like points in a football game. When a team scores a touchdown, there aren’t some vat of points that are decreased to add points to that team’s score. Instead, they’re made up. The limit to the number of points that can be scored in a game is based entirely on the productivity of the teams.

If we reset to zero every day and all played NFL® football, well, that might make sense. In MMT, the idea is that extra cash is just soaked up via taxation rather than the game ending.

What happens when the score keeps going up from game to game.

But the GloboLeftElite really, really don’t like to be taxed. As much as Warren Buffett complains that he’s not taxed enough, the one thing Warren never, ever does is send more than he owes in taxes in voluntarily. In fact, he has fleets of lawyers working every angle possible so that he pays the least amount in taxes possible. (Note: If Donald Trump were to try this he would be tried for felony tax evasion.)

There are two types of people in this world: Those who can find an answer through simple deduction.

This is not a new thing. It really started under W., and has continued through Obama, Trump, and Biden.

But what could go wrong?

GloboLeftists believe that women are cheated in the workplace, earning less than men.

I’ll start by reminding everyone that GloboLeftists don’t even know what a woman is, to the point that a sitting Supreme Court Justice was unable to define what a woman was during her Senate confirmation hearings, and sits on the Supreme Court.

However . . .

The reality is that women actually make more than men when their wages are controlled for things like, oh, career choice, amount of overtime put in, time taken off to have children, et cetera. The idea is so simplistic in that it takes everyone, puts them in a bag, and says that the average man makes X, and the average woman makes 0.8X.

Yes. That’s true. But when I went to a college graduation several years ago and they called out the engineers, 90% plus were men in some fields, and in no engineering field were women even close to a majority.

And they both give sound advice.

I wonder if that could be partially a reason for a pay difference?

Nah. Sexism is easier, and if people will swallow MMT, they’ll swallow anything. I mean, we already knew that about Kamala.

GloboLeftists believe that increasing a labor supply won’t decrease wages.

Immigration is an amazing source of brain rot for GloboLeftists. They think that bringing in hordes of illegal aliens won’t drop the price of unskilled labor. Now, not for one minute do I believe that’s the case, and neither do the people (the GloboLeftElite) that are feeding those thoughts to the rank and file.

But lower labor costs mean higher profits, so why not bring in not only illegal aliens, but tons of people on H1-B visas to take the jobs that Americans had – the number of stories of people showing up to work only to be forced to train their replacements to “earn” their severance package is so common as to be boring. It doesn’t even make the news anymore.

Yet the flip side is that they also don’t think that raising the minimum wage will have any impact on prices?

As found.

The last belief that I’m going to touch on that the GloboLeft has is this: history has nothing to teach us about the danger of an irreligious society basted in feminism and socialism.

Hey, wait, do you hear someone yelling “I’m not listening to you! I’m not listening to you! I’m not listening to you!”?

I’m sure it’s not just me. You can hear that, right?

Oh, and as a follow up to Monday’s post, here is NASA’s Administrator. He believes the far side of the Moon is always dark. Really.

Zoomers And Pools Of Cash

“The pools of blood that have collected, you’ve got to soak that up. Now, Jimmie, we need to raid your linen closet.” – Pulp Fiction

How do you drown a programmer? Put up a sign that says, “no swimming”.

If I were to come up with a metaphor for today’s situation, well, it might be this . . .

While I was half asleep this morning I visualized in that gauzy dreamy sort of way, dark pools, sitting quietly behind a large earthen structure. At first, the surfaces of the pools were smooth and reflective like glass as they slowly filled.

It was calm, and serene. For now. But the level was coming up.

What was the defining moment of my generation in our youth? Probably the fall of the Berlin Wall. I can still remember the news stories piling up day by day as the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact nations slowly turned away from communism and then someone said the Berlin Wall didn’t match the Iron Curtains, so, it had to go. What a time to be alive! Heck, women were still winning women’s swim meets!

If I were born a bit earlier, it would probably would have been the Iranian Hostage Crisis, or Carter’s Stagflation, both of which led to Reagan’s election and eventual conversion to MechaReagan®, who fought Godzilla® and Mothra™. But that’s another story.

Anyway, think about those defining moments, the defining events of Gen Z are still out there, and I wonder what that would be. In the case of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was a story that, at the time, was filled with hope. Here was the collapse of a political system bent on the forceful subjugation of humanity. What’s not to celebrate?

What was the favorite song of East Germans before the Berlin Wall came down? “Under Prussia”

In the end, though, what was lost in that moment was restraint. Just like Gingrich restrained the worst (political!) impulses of Bill Clinton (“What, I can’t spend what I want to spend because of the way the bond market might react?”), the Soviet Union constrained the worst impulses of the people in power in Washington. That restraint really ended with Clinton who had to fight to save his political career after lying under oath about dallying with the help.

But after Clinton, after 9-11?

Bill Clinton will be remembered for the economy. Oh, and that one other thing . . . .

All restraint fell. Oh, sure, we needed to go and find Osama Bin Laden, but did we need to invade Iraq? In hindsight, almost certainly not. Did we need to stay in Afghanistan for 20 years? Again, almost certainly not. And these adventures cost trillions of dollars, all of which we didn’t have. But that’s okay. Cash isn’t for earning. It’s for spending. Like AOC said when asked where the money would come from for one of her socialist programs: “You just pay for it!”

She was, and is, serious about this, since her understanding of cause and effect is limited to her goldfish-like memory.

But those dark pools of my dreams, they were filling. And while they filled, they began to destabilize everyone tied to the United States. In Egypt, for instance, I think they eat nothing but rice, sawdust, and the occasional house pet, which is fairly inexpensive. So, a small change in the price of rice or a decrease in the availability of sawdust causes people, real people, to go hungry.

Does Biden look like he needs more fiber in his diet to you?

As Snickers® told us, “You’re not you when you’re hungry” and hungry people are the ones that overthrow Middle Eastern despots. But that’s okay. You just pay for it.

What does the Left think about all the illegal aliens that are teeming over the border in relentless streams? You just pay for them. And you have to. Even when we’re not stacking them like cordwood in Chicago or displacing vets to house them in New York or trying to teach them to ski in Colorado, there is one horrible fact about illegal aliens:

They cost more than they create. We can’t get a volume discount if we import them by the millions. No, they just cost billions more. The net annual value of an illegal to the economy is, at minimum, -$10,000 per year. NEGATIVE $10,000, and that’s after the work they provide.

I used to worry about the collapse of the United States because of the destruction of our nation’s values and economy by illegals, but that was too scary. Now I just worry about celebrities. (meme as found)

Where does the cash come from? If you’re AOC, “You just pay for them.”

And all that “you just pay for it” is what’s filling those dark pools of my dreams.

If all that cash would just sit, quietly, in those dark pools, there really isn’t a problem. If we pay Raytheon™ for a $4 million dollar Patriot® missile to destroy $20,000 Iranian drones, as long as Raytheon© just leaves that money in their bank account, filling up the pool.

But, oops, you have to pay people to make the missile. If it’s only the Chinese who keep the money in a bank account somewhere and never use it, that’s fine, too, because that’s just another dark pool of money.

When the Fed™ started out bailing out every bank, that’s really what happened. The banks kept the cash in deposit, and salted it away in their dark pools.

I think it’s the dark pools of cash that will ultimately be the defining moment for Gen Z. Well, not the dark pools themselves, but, rather, the mess they make when the levee breaks. We’re seeing the problem starting now, and Gen Z is aware – many of them have lived their teen years seeing nothing but inflation as the pools break loose.

I’m getting tired of Gen Z, always walking around like they can afford to rent the place.

The pools are up high, and have a great deal of potential energy. The destruction the flow will create as the cash spreads down through the economy has been bad, but it will be legendary. When the American Continental was issued it was backed by the same thing the dollar is today: nothing. The phrase “not worth a Continental” was no doubt on the minds of the framers of the Constitution as they wrote that no State shall make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment in debts.”

But that’s quaint thought, right?

(meme as found)

Weimar Germany followed the AOC “just pay for it” formula, and German bankers eventually (after some, um, events) became the most cautious in Europe about inflation.

So, after my dream of last night, I think we have a big dam problem.

It worked so well last time, right?

Rebuilding America: First It Will Fail

Rebuilding America

“Blown up, sir!” – Stripes

Raw materials for steel have gone way up in price. Producers say it’s a horrible ore deal.

When I was in 6^th grade, I remember driving to Capital City with Pa Wilder while he had a business trip. As part of the trip, we went through Industrial Town. The major feature of Industrial Town was a miles-long hulking rusted out steel plant complete with huge towers, big enough to hold Oprah’s breakfast.

To me, they looked like the discarded remnants of an ancient technological innovation. In fact, when I was reading a novel about explorers that had gone to some far-off world that had been littered with the technology of an incomprehensible civilization, I visualized that old steel plant.

It was rare to have one-on-one time with just Pa and I. He often worked long hours, but on longer trips, sometimes we’d talk about, well, whatever. As I’ve mentioned before Pa was a banker, and I think he was more amused by my early fixation on science than anything. But when it came to the steel plant, Pa Wilder knew a lot, and that day was the first time I ever heard “Bessemer Process”, and we talked about steel and history during the drive. He said that once upon a time, you could bring your ore, make steel, and sell it for a fee. Apparently “He who smelt it, dealt it” didn’t catch on as a business model.

I hate recycling aluminum cans. It’s just soda pressing.

Bad dad jokes aside, when we drove by, that old steel mill wasn’t doing so well. The major reason, oddly, was World War II.

During World War II, the United States and Britain, mostly did everything they could to blow up anyth8ing in Germany that could make a ball bearing or paper clip. At the end of the war, the country was in ru8ins. The same thing happened in Japan – the country was wrecked, and, unlike Germany, the Japanese didn’t have many of resources needed for steel production, things like iron ore or coal.

In both cases, Germany and Japan didn’t build back with the Bessemer Process, they built back with the newest technology. Japan, especially, had to focus on being efficient since Japan has fewer natural resources to work with to make steel than Kamala Harris has for use in a battle of wits.

Once Kamala though she might be pregnant. She asked the doctor, “Is it mine?”

To be clear, it was very hard to rebuild nations shattered by the Last Modern War, but once those countries did finally rebuild, they were the most efficient and highest quality steelmakers in the world.

But this took decades.

The infrastructure had to be completely rebuilt. Then people had to learn how to make the new technology – basic oxygen steelmaking was pioneered by the Swiss and the Austrians. Oh, sure, the Austrians and Swiss are so autistic that asking a girl out is a seventeen-step process that has to be memorized prior to execution, but that’s exactly the autism level needed when you’re going to change an entire industry.

In a rare screwup, the Swiss dude who invented the process wasn’t legally able stop the Japanese from using his process for free, and the Japanese licked it up without having to pay royalties. The Swiss, experts at chocolate, hoarding gold, yodeling, and engineering. At being attorneys? Maybe not so much. 80% of Japanese steel was made using the basic oxygen process by 1970, because it was far cheaper.

Oops.

But Baltimore is gr . . . oh.

Since the United States didn’t bother to innovate, US Steel©, once the biggest steel manufacturer in the world, was sold to Nippon Steel™ for the equivalent of what Elon Musk keeps in his couch cushions back in December, 2023.

What’s the lesson here?

To be clear, in many cases our economy is where Japan’s was after World War II. There are two major differences:

It’s not as obvious because the nigh-infinite ability of the United States to print cash and trade it for things like steel is still in effect, and
We were complicit in the destruction of our own industry via free trade, regulations, and financialization, and didn’t even need to use any bombs.

To rebuild an industry requires time. It also requires a lot of investment of money, but it also requires the best talent in the country. Silicon Valley became the information systems capital of the world because it brought together capital and talent over the period of decades. Taiwan became the semiconductor capital of the world because of the capital and talent it consumed over the course of decades.

Hey, that’s what Xi said.

What did New York do? Soaked up capital to loan and soaked up talent to figure out how to magic more cash into existence – by and large a waste of decades of some of the best and brightest in the world.

This is the game that we should have been playing, but stopped when the United States was the undisputed manufacturing giant of the world. Now, the reason we were the undisputed manufacturing giant of the world was because everyone else was blown up. What did we do with that success?

Rested. Relaxed. And began to believe that the economic success was a right, not a consequence of hard work, talent, and investment.

We have to learn to build things, not financial products. But we also have things to unlearn. Our liability system is horrific, but that’s because liability lawyers fund the Democratic party, so, they buy more bacon-wrapped shrimp than others.

The other thing to unlearn is zero impact. As long as humans live on the planet, we’ll impact it – the idea is to conserve and make wise use of our resources. The GloboLeftElite have taken their mask off when climate ideologs go after the United States, with declining carbon emissions, and ignore China and India with massive and growing carbon emissions, with China producing nearly three times the CO2 of the United States.

How dare you!

But have the GloboLeftElite complain about China or India?

Nah. They wouldn’t listen anyway.

The path forward requires that we fail. Great news! We’ve failed! We’re in a worse place than the Japanese after World War II due to our cultural inertia and the newfangled “all the Zoomers have a mental disorder” society.

The second part of the path is letting go of the financialization and making PowerPoints® in New York as the goal of society. If we want to be serious, we have to make stuff, not accounting irregularities.

There’s a reason that China’s buying gold, and that reason is simple:

They’re making steel.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: A Month Closer

“That’s the theme song from The Jeffersons. You really need help.” – Tropic Thunder

All these clock pictures sometimes tick me off.

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 V, Issue 11

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

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

I’ve rolled back the clock this month. We’ll see if it holds.

In this issue: Front Matter – Variations on a Theme – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – We Win – Links

Front Matter

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 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Variations on a Theme

During the month I collect headlines and other information that documents the way things are going – for me, it’s interesting just how quickly something either fades from memory, or becomes the “new normal” and becomes business as usual. The following (at first) seemed a bit disjointed to me, but in the end they all tell the same story – the story of the plans to eliminate the culture that now exits, and the desire to hold on to power, no matter what the cost.

Keeping that in mind, the election is coming up. Trump is leading and one major Democratic technique is to create an electorate split. The reason they want the power, is to use it.

And there’s a big population of businesses that are coordinating to “interfere” in the election. The GloboLeftElite always project what they are doing on their enemies. And, to them, we are not competitors, we are deathly enemies.

As has been a major theme on all media this, not just here at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise®, illegal aliens oozing across the border has been the biggest story of 2024. The GloboLeft tries to pretend that they’re not in favor of this, but it’s abundantly clear that this is no mistake, not act of nature. This is entirely planned.

This policy stays either without respect to the consequences or, perhaps, because of the consequences. The consequences have significant negative impacts of the actual citizens here, including employment. They are helped by official at every level.

The consequences? Lawlessness and lowered competence.

The long term plan? Who knows?

There is sufficient proof that the GloboLeft hates God:

And that the GloboLeft is everywhere:

And that they worship death:

And don’t care about our deepest cultural beliefs:

And that they’ll put their, um, “money” where their mouth is since humans are apparently just TransCows to them:

Violence and Censorship Update

Several readers have reported to me (via email) that they were unsubscribed or that their subscriptions are filtered out as spam. FYI. Might it be random? Sure. It might. Heard about more this month.

I’ll (mostly) let the memes speak for themselves. Foreign stories are included as they often foreshadow attempts in the United States.

I did two stories this month on Sweet Baby Inc.’s looting of game companies for money and to insert GloboLeftElite propaganda into games to control your mind. Remember, never buy anything from a company that has a CEO that stole a hair style from Sideshow Bob on the Simpsons.

Here’s the playbook that Sweet Baby Inc. uses . . .

And the voice of someone who called them on it, and got doxed:

And (from the UK) what successful Social Justice looks like:

And the next few are the result of successful Social Justice policies:

And probably the plan:

And, Canada is seeing the end game in sight:

Here’s a bit more on that:

And the what the RCMP thinks of Canadians:

But March was also rich in Orwell:

Never forget, the GloboLeftElite will blame others for what they’re already doing:

And Canada showing they’ve figured out what a woman really is . . .

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again. It’s like it’s planned:

Updated Civil War II Index

Violence:

Violence is down, expected in spring. Probably quiet until June or July.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is slightly up.

Economic:

Economic numbers are near a high, but I wonder if it’s the drunk before the hangover?

Illegal Aliens:

Highest March. Ever.

We Win

To have a civil war, there have to be two sides. I think the goal of the GloboLeftElite has been to convince those who oppose it that the game is over. They have already shown themselves to be ready to do anything, absolutely anything to gain power. From then, they’ll pull up the ladder. What do they want?

“Voting” so loosely open that anyone can do it. Think something as simple as obtaining a drivers license equates a ballot in the mail. Then, anyone can harvest those ballots and mark them however they want, with no accountability. This was tried in 2020, and works great for the GloboLeft.

Combined with voting changes (first point) the GloboLeft is cramming illegals into Red States as fast as they can. Either they’re “voters” or an army. Neither of those is good news.

They also want control of the finances so that they can wreck them. Why? I have no idea on this one. Perhaps the Elite just want to consolidate the power and own it all.

Of course, guns have been the bug up the butt of the Left for, well, forever. They try to make up things, but the real answer is that guns prevent the GloboLeft from taking the country over. It is clear from history that killing children is not something that bothers the GloboLeft at all, as the GloboLeft are currently the world champions at kid killing.

People are waking up. They’re seeing the real Evil of the Left:

They’re seeing that Woke doesn’t help anyone:

They’re seeing the engineered replacement:

They’re seeing that a society without marriage is weak, at best:

They’re seeing that the elite want to enslave them:

Even the GloboLeftElite’s hand-chosen minions are seeing the damage:

The RINOs are being challenged:

And a real A.I. without censoring, can see what’s up:

We will win. Even 4Chan sees it:

Like I always say – the road may be tough, be we really can’t lose.

LINK

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/ModernityNews/status/1767165884764709217

https://twitter.com/i/status/1765525665862795547

https://twitter.com/The_Real_Fly/status/1764308853095633224

https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1764270162264416637

https://twitter.com/itshoggs/status/1764148239568191724?t=Yb1ucXfa2OWsweGarTyQiQ&s=19

Good Guys

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QytMLIyq6Y8

https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1768665733850902779

https://nypost.com/2024/03/15/us-news/nyc-subway-rider-who-shot-aggresive-straphanger-during-rush-hour-commute-wont-be-charged-prosecutors/

https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1770624522150126010

One Guy

https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback

https://www.news.com.au/national/northern-territory/carnage-alice-springs-anticrime-campaigner-robbed-in-sleep-during-alleged-home-invasion/news-story/c65d3e9c6039c328ee67039246507b23

https://youtu.be/YGz1Tiaying

Body Count

https://twitter.com/_BlakeHabyan/status/1763055020478464084

https://twitter.com/InfoUncensored/status/1757473606655729776

https://twitter.com/ResidentialClub/status/1774223963196973159

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/03/28/most-believe-jesus-christs-resurrection-new-poll-finds/

Vote Count

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1764478200334168570

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2024/03/04/the-sad-state-of-marylands-voter-rolls-79k-inaccurate-records-found

https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-2024-election-will-be-neither-free-nor-fair/

https://newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/gabriela-pariseau/2024/03/18/41-times-google-has-interfered-us-elections-2008

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/03/lew-rockwell/how-the-democrats-plan-to-steal-the-election/

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/03/26/saving-democracy-from-itself-the-democratic-national-committee-moves-to-block-third-party-candidates/

https://www.judicialwatch.org/illinois-voting-rolls/?source=46&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=press%20release&s=15

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2024-03-26/theyre-going-let-trump-win

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/mississippi-doj-elections/2024/03/13/id/1157105/

https://www.yahoo.com/news/nyc-council-asking-states-highest-221121732.html

https://news.yahoo.com/biden-building-superstructure-stop-trump-141631115.html

https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1771398655184171487

Civil War

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/30/alex-garland-civil-war-interview

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/15/civil-war-review

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/civil-war-movie-timing-maga-violence-1235831454/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQOZ4KctZ0k

https://www.dailywire.com/news/harvard-accused-of-promoting-eco-terrorism-for-plans-to-screen-how-to-blow-up-a-pipeline-film

https://www.youtube.com/watch

https://twitter.com/WallStreetApes/status/1760394086274695385

https://tldavis.substack.com/p/complacent-about-replacement?r=1ggdo

https://tldavis.substack.com/p/the-fragile-state

https://victorhanson.com/american-paralysis-and-decline/

https://newrepublic.com/article/179966/four-2024-post-election-scenarios-trump

It Came From . . . 1984

“There’s one in every car.” – Repo Man

Who knew that all the actors were Chinese? (All art via A.I.)

In 2024, you could go see Dune and Ghostbusters at the movies. In 1984, you could go see Lynch’s Dune (meh, Harkonnens were too stupid), and the original Ghostbusters, certainly one of the finest comedies of all time – probably top 10, certainly top 20.

Was 1984 peak movie? Maybe. The following list is certainly an impressive one, and many, MANY of the ones I left off the list would be in the top three movies as far as quality in 2024.

The list is in no particular order.

Repo Man – A movie about an alien in the trunk of a car being driven around by the physicist who developed the neutron bomb. In a weird twist, the movie was actually one of the favorites of the actual inventor of the neutron bomb. The movie still holds up. There’s one in every car.

This is Spinal Tap – Yes, Rob Reiner is a horrible idiot for whom Meathead would be an upgrade name, but in 1984 he put together a talented team of comedic actors who ad-libbed a very funny mocumentary. This one really does go to 11.

Romancing The Stone – “Joan Wilder? THE Joan Wilder?” Novelist meets up with Indiana Jones-wannabe adventurer and is chased by Danny DeVito over a looted emerald. Nowadays it would be misogynistic colonialists getting involved with colonialism and cultural appropriation.

Why is he holding the snake’s tail?????

The Bounty – I re-watched this last month. A wonderful production shot in New Zealand which was my first exposure to the story. “What, you mean this really happened?” Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins chewing up the screen just like the two amazing actors they are.

Sixteen Candles – John Hughes started writing for National Lampoon in the 1970s. He moved to film, and made about a zillion dollars. Sixteen Candles was his first “teen” movie, and the first movie he directed, and featured a character named Long Duk Dong, who had the best line of the movie: “No more yankee my wankee, Donger need food.”

That’s the way all the cool kids wear their cowboy boots when they turn 16.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – The worst of the three Indiana Jones® movies. If only they would have made more of them! Imagine how good they might have been! More misogyny and cultural appropriation at work, of course. No time for love, Doctor Jones!

Police Academy – This movie was weirdly and amazingly successful. It cost $4.5 million, made $149 million, so it worked out pretty well. The first one really did have some funny moments, and didn’t let the plot get in the way of the humor. This movie also taught me to check the podium before I give a speech.

If Bollywood had done Police Academy . . .

Ghostbusters – In many years, there would be no argument that Ghostbusters was the best film of the year. In 1984, it might have been the best, but it has such stiff competition. Ghostbusters had the perfect cast, the perfect script, and was released at the perfect time.

Top Secret! – Skeet Surfin’? Your Skeetin’ Heart? Yes, we all remember the surf ‘n’ shoot craze of the 1980s. Good times. “What fake dog poop?”

There’s so much going on in this one . . . .

The Karate Kid – Ralph Macchio seems to never age. He’s 342 years old, but still looks like he’s in his twenties. I still recall when I figured out that Daniel was the bad guy and am still on team Johnny.

Conan the Destroyer – Okay, a sequel. But by far a better movie than the first one. There was supposed to be a third, but that ended up being Kull, which was a pretty good 1990s movie with Sorbo. Arnie was also starting to learn to an actor, rather than just being huge.

This one is actually kinda close . . .

Red Dawn – It’s Red Dawn. Nothing more needs to be said.

C.H.U.D. – C.H.U.D. stands for “Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers. It’s a B-movie, and suffers from all of the things that B-movies are known for. Except in this one case, there are actually a lot of good actors who somehow got talked into making this stupid movie.

Body Double – Brian DePalma having fun in a film-noir-ish thriller featuring Melanie Griffith before plastic surgery turned her face into an object that resembles a life preserver. I saw this on HBO® was especially interested in one or two scenes . . .

The Terminator – It’s The Terminator. Nothing more needs to be said.

If Chuck Norris’ hair was feathered like the wings of a majestic bird. Oh, wait, it is!

Missing in Action – This film helped Chuck Norris on his way towards mainstream success, and he certainly was invincible in it.

Beverly Hills Cop – Eddie Murphy was everywhere in 1984. I re-watched this movie a month ago, and Murphy was pretty funny in it, but it (sort of) had the quality of a made-for-television movie. Which was okay, it certainly wasn’t intended to be anything other than a buddy-cop comedy. With a little lemon twist. (I make it myself).

2010 – This is a direct sequel to 2001: A Space Odessey. I re-watched this one sometime this year (while blogging). It answers the questions from 2001, and ends the series nicely. It is a window on another time, since (list most science fiction of time) it presupposes that the Soviet Union still exists. It’s (still) full of stars.

Wow. This one is actually pretty good.

Dune – David Lynch reportedly is a pretty cool guy, but I asked the Internet if he ever read the book Dune. The Internet said “yes”, which surprised me a little bit. Were there good parts of this movie? Sure. The worst parts were the stupid “weirding” devices and the cartoonishly evil Harkonnens. But we all know, the spice must flow.

1984 – Based on Orwell’s book. It was dark and depressing, but well cast. Orwellian has become overused, but I think we needed to go through our Brave New World phase to get to 1984. Not sure you could make this movie today.

Runaway – A weird little “near future” film where Tom Selleck is the cop and Gene Simmons is the bad guy. As an actor, Gene is an okay bass player. The film was, though, enjoyable.

Okay, who’s the clown in the corner?

Johnny Dangerously – It’s not a great comedy, and probably isn’t in the top 100 of all time. But I’d be a farging isehal if I didn’t put it on the list. Michael Keaton was really good, and the fact that Keaton spends time doing drama movies should make us all sad.

There is only one remake on this list. There are only three sequels on this list. Studios took chances, and weren’t focused on franchises or (overly) the GloboLeft Narrative and the result? Crazy success. It was Morning in America, and Reagan was amazingly popular.

Was this America at its peak? No, probably America in autumn, when the harvest started, which is why all of the sequels started. It’s much harder to create new things than to just keep pumping profits off of the old. Seven of these movies spawned sequels, not including the ones that were already sequels.

These films compared to today? An embarrassment of riches.

How Transfer Payments Might Doom Us All

“Okay. Let’s just chew our way out of here.” – Big Trouble in Little China

The Andy Griffith show would have been a lot different if her name had been Aunt Tifa.

I like thinking about the economy and what we have in front of us, and I guess I’m not alone.

Recently I stumbled across a column in Zero Hedge® that originated from Mike Shedlock at his place (link below). Shedlock has been writing about economics for years, and was pretty far out in front of the Great Recession. When Shedlock starts to tease at the threads of the economy, he just might have something interesting to say.

How Much Do Food Stamps, Social Security, and Medicare Support the Economy?

Anyway, the column that caught my eye tied back inflation to the amount of money that the government spends that it doesn’t get anything for, or transfer payments – pulling from one source (taxes or printing) to give to another person or group. The examples of this are everywhere. Shedlock mentions:

food stamps,
Taylor Swift,
Social Security,
Late night television hosts,
Medicare,
PEZ® theft,
Medicaid,
Kamala’s vodka supply,
child tax credits, and
other “welfare” payments.

Okay, I’ll admit I might have added a few things to Mike’s list.

It’s been three months since I joined the gym and I’ve had zero progress. Tomorrow I’ll go in person to see what the problem is.

During the Great COVID Crisis, first Trump and then Biden threw money at the economy, and the amount of income that people got from the government in transfer payments DOUBLED as a percentage of income. That’s staggering. This isn’t an absolute number, but as a percentage, which actually makes it worse. Not to mention all the companies that got paid for not doing business, not selling beer, and not making good movies. Disney®, I’m looking at you.

Here’s an odd sentence: Missing Person Remains Found.

Part of the trouble with the economy has been masked, for years. That trouble is Social Security. In 2018, Social Security started paying out more in benefits than it received in taxes. This was supposed to be just fine because all of the payments from past years that were put into a “trust fund”.

Well, Congress didn’t just pile all of those tax dollars it was taking in under the mattress or in a Mason® jar buried back near the old outhouse behind the Fed®. Nope. Congress did what politicians always do with every available dollar: they spent it to buy nice things (things that lobbyists wanted) immediately when they got the cash in their appetizer-covered little fingers. Oh, and they borrowed more, too. The only thing the “trust fund” did was mask the true size of the deficit.

What if your trust fund has a negative balance?

It’s like that with most things the government does, but there is a limit to how much of the economy you can just make up before reality eventually catches up with you. Ask Enron™.

Regardless, things are going to get much, much worse. All of those illegals that are streaming across the border as fast as we can pay (yes, the United States is actually paying cash to them on the road) them to get here? Once they get here, they’re being paid thousands of dollars a year plus free chow and lodging and medical care. All of that cash is just printed at this point, and spent on something that adds no net productivity to the economy.

Well, he is called Bad Luck Brian for a reason. He also invested his life savings with Bernie Madoff.

And, where, exactly are these millions of people going to live? They’re staying 30 to a house, and buying up properties that used to go to Bobby and Becky when they got married, but now can’t afford them due to the massive competition and rising interest rates.

The Boomers? They’re retiring in droves right now, and Social Security and Medicare spending will only increase as they retire. This will, of course, come from spending rather than the non-existent trust fund.

None of the above counts how much more we’ll send to Ukraine or Taiwan or Israel or Haiti.

All of these transfer payments *plus* the increased interest on the debt that we took out to buy the things the lobbyists wanted in 1994 will result in stopping Congress from spending.

Ha! See! I made it through that with a straight face. Man, I should have used that line on April Fools’ Day. Of course Congress isn’t going to stop spending. They’re not even going to slow down. There are still appetizers to be eaten, and lobbyists to be massaged.

One lobbyist even lobbied to save the penny. He called himself a change agent.

And again, Congress got away with this quite well when the United States was the Sole Global Superpower™. Now? China is pushing us economically, and from a military standpoint, it’s looking pretty iffy: no one wants to sign up to fight Russia for Ukraine, or China for Taiwan. Additionally, unless the war(s) go nuclear, I question how prepared we are to fight a near-peer foe in 2024.

Like I said, I like thinking about the future of the economy. I always have enjoyed horror movies.