Creating havoc since 2006. Fair use is claimed for images on this site, but they will be removed (if owned) on request out of politeness. movingnorth@gmail.com
Streams will show up at 9EDT (click the link below), that’s in just over an hour! (and we typically pregame for five minutes, so it really starts up at 8:55PM)
Funniest News On the ‘Net.
In this episode:
“Don’t try to fight it. You’ll get brain bubbles, strokes, aneurysms.” – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Is bubble wrap part of pop culture? (All memes as-found)
Elon Musk promises a supercomputer cluster bigger than Texas that’ll make Skynet™ look like an HP-15C®. It even has a creepy name for those who know film history: Colossus™. Of course, it’s going to require more power than a quiver of Antifa® mainlining Red Bull© during a riot. I like that. A herd of cattle, a murder of crows, and a quiver of Antifa©.
But it’s not just Elon. There’s also Sam Altman, that pint-sized messiah of OpenAI© is out here swearing he’ll build data centers the size of Afghanistan, all to birth the AI-god-emperor that’ll finally figure out why fish from Long John Silver’s® always tastes like regret.
But here’s the kicker: this might be the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. If When this AI bubble pops, it may very well make the dotcom crash look like look like a lost wallet.
On recent analysis I saw was over here (LINK) by Ed Zitron, and no, I’m not going to make fun of his last name as tempting as that might be since he writes well. When I read it, it wasn’t behind the paywall, but it was also insightful. Trust me.
His conclusion?
According to Ed’s analysis, the AI hype train is barreling toward a cliff made of physics, bad math, and even worse economics. If Mr. Zitron is correct, trillions of dollars are being flushed down the toilet on promises that of a technical revolution which, while automating many boring tasks, unfortunately won’t replace the staff at the DMV.
“Oh, yeah? You and what army? Oh, that army.” – Cicero
First off, the promises.
OpenAI’s® scribbled deals on cocktail napkins that will eventually result in laws prohibiting what they’re doing. As I mentioned in a previous post, they’re committing to drop $300 billion on Oracle™ over five years. That amounts to $5 billion a month, which is more than Taylor Swift makes in an entire year. Just kidding, but that $5 billion a month is a big number, since OpenAI only made $4.3 billion in the first six months of 2025.
OpenAI™ doesn’t have the money, of course, but, hey, it’s a bubble, so who is counting? They have stock, so if they don’t have cash, they’ll just give you stock.
What is OpenAI© buying with that cash that they don’t have? A gigawatt-scale data center orgy that’ll need more energy than Switzerland. Probably. Maybe. I’d need to know how many electric toothbrushes the Swiss use to be sure.
But, the problem is, nobody has built a gigawatt data center.
Ever.
Imagine the stock valuations! Follow me for more tips!
The biggest data centers today top out at maybe 100 megawatts, and that’s if the grid fairies are feeling generous. Take Stargate Abilene, OpenAI’s© “investment” with Oracle®. It’s supposed to hit 1.2 gigawatts, but right now?
They’ve got a puny 200-megawatt substation and some jury-rigged natural gas turbines that might squeak out another 350 megawatts if we can talk the Chinese into sending us the rare earth materials to make them.
Reality check: to run just this one location, they need 1.7 gigawatts total just to cover cooling and losses. And, it’s in Texas, which is not known for being a good place to keep stuff cold. They picked a climate where cooling the data center will be like trying to cool my nether regions in a sauna using a hairdryer.
And the power? Forget it. Transformers and substations take 2-4 years to build, and we’re fresh out globally. The article quotes some Bloomberg® wonk admitting they’re slapping together “not the really good” turbines because the premium ones have a seven-year waitlist.
Seven years! By then, those fancy Nvidia™ H100 GPUs will be as obsolete as Taylor Swift’s ovaries.
None of this is hyperbole. This is simple math: Taylor’s really getting up there if she wants to have kids. But back to the data center. Roughly, if you have a gigawatt of power that gets you maybe 700 megawatts of actual data center capacity after the universe’s entropy tax.
OpenAI® is pledging 6 gigawatts of AMD® GPUs by late 2026.
No way.
No sites have been picked, no financing has been announced.
No nothing.
It’s like promising to pay off the national debt by spending more so we make it up in . . . volume, yeah, volume discounts. Now, let’s spice it up with history, because nothing says “wealth wisdom” like learning from suckers who came before.
As I mentioned in the previous post, this is straight out of the dotcom collapse.
17 isn’t a big number, is it?
Remember Cisco™? Yes, they make good stuff, and they survived. But back in the year 2000, they were the kings of the internet pipe dream and they hit $69 a share in 2000 bucks. Yesterday, they were at $68.66, so on an inflation-adjusted basis, they haven’t ever returned to their 2000 peak. The world realized nobody needed that many routers to email “I can has cheezeburger?” cat pictures.
If that were it, we’d probably be okay. But Nvidia™ is now priced out at 8% of the entire valuation of the S&P 500. The “500” in S&P 500 means the largest 500 companies in the United States. And one company is 8% of it.
This is the highest share of any single company in the history of S&P 500. Ever. The top seven tech firms account for 34% of the S&P 500.
Should we worry about that? Nah. It’s not like private equity is running out of cash for all of these projects. Wait, what? They are, and lots of them are exiting so they have sufficient cash left to buy cocaine and OnlyFans™ girls to snort the coke off of.
The worst part is that the entire thing is so incestuous that it makes a Habsburg family reunion look positively eugenic. Nvidia™ invests $100 billion in OpenAI® which then invests some other imaginary amount of billions in a deal with Oracle© to buy data centers and stuff them full of Nvidia® GPUs. The result? The stock price of each of these companies increases.
This doesn’t look corrupt. At all. Ignore the man behind the curtain.
Economically? It distorts everything. One estimate was that AI infrastructure spending accounted for 92% of U.S. GDP growth in the first half of this year, all based on debt and soaring stock prices.
OpenAI’s projecting $200 billion revenue and $38 billion profit by 2030?
Cute. How do they expect to do that as their current business model is selling a dollar’s worth of computations for four cents? I guess they’ll make it up in volume?
Really, that’s not their bet. Their bet is that they’ll be the first to the prize: superhuman intelligence that will do their bidding. To be clear, if they got that, it might be worth it. For Sam Altman. Or for AI if it decides to go full Cyberdyne Systems and make Sam clean toilets.
A coincidence or a collapse?
But certainly not for you, and not for me. It would be an economic dislocation that would be the biggest in human history, even more than my divorce. If AI turns out to be real, actually disrupting the workforce like a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving, automating jobs left and right: boom.
Economic collapse. Trillions in productivity gains? Nope, it’s trillions in pink slips, ghost towns of cubicles, folks out of work, AI overlords hoarding the pie. I can see it now, French Revolution 2.0 with robot guillotines from RobotGuillotines.com.
But if AI’s the dud . . . hang on, what’s a dud in this context?
With the trillion plus dollars invested and the distortion to the economy it could be the most successful product in history and still be an economic wrecking ball. It it’s a dud, then all this investment?
Wasted.
Trillions vaporized on e-waste mountains, exec bonuses, and data centers that won’t be filled for the next century. This will drag down markets, pensions, and everyone eats ramen for the next decade.
C’mon buddy, you’ve got to earn that van.
If it works?
Collapse.
If it doesn’t work?
Money bonfire and depression.
Thankfully, in almost either scenario we will be able to avoid the real danger to society: Long John Silver’s®.
First, you can now find Western Rifle Shooters HERE or you can press the button.
Second, no proper post today. I made a run at a post, but didn’t like the result 500 words in. Back to a proper post on Wednesday, I’ve got a good one, I think
“An animal caught in a trap will gnaw off its own leg to escape. What will you do?” – Dune
I read the first four novels, but I found them a bit dry. (All memes as found)
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
– Frank Herbert, Dune
In 2025, fear is not just a personal demon. Fear is now a cultural plague, especially for the kids.
We have raised a generation terrified of their own shadows, and it shows in every therapy session, pill bottle, riot, and Antifa® meeting.
The number of kids in therapy or pumped full of psychoactive drugs by the quacks who call themselves psychologists seems to be 8 or 9 out of 10. In perspective, this is the era of civilization that has the greatest level of material wealth in history, and the lowest hunger rate in the world.
World hunger?
It’s a solved problem outside of war and intentional starvation for political reasons.
The drugs and therapy are not making the kids better. At all. The way society is treating kids is like prescribing a hammer to the knees for a headache. The good news is the pain from the hammer will distract you from the headache, but eventually you’ll only be able to walk in circles.
The Mrs. asked me to have a talk with our kids on drugs. I said, “Sure, but I don’t think I’ll make much sense when I’m high.”
And no, these drugs are not good for you like whiskey, whisky, wine or beer. That’s a joke, but if therapy worked as well as a couple of brews after a long day, Antifa® wouldn’t exist.
Kids today are not allowed to figure anything out on their own. Failure? That is a dirty word, banished like fiscal responsibility is banished from Congress. As a proud Gen X kid, my family left me alone for the entire weekend when I was in third grade. No note, no nanny, no neighbor looking in on me from time to time. Nope. Just a key and a fridge full of questionable leftovers. I survived on frozen pizzas and three channels (no one counted PBS®), but I learned to entertain myself without burning the house down.
Barely.
When Paul wanted the last glass of water, he called Muad’Dibs on it.
By eighth grade, Ma and Pa Wilder upped the ante. They drove off to Florida.
For a month, leaving me to fend for myself. I even dealt with a thumb wound that probably should have had stitches from when I was using very poor form to whittle.
Did I call for help? No.
I fixed it with duct tape, determination, and a healthy glop of Neosporin™.
That is what you do when the stakes are low and the lessons are free.
High school? That is when freedom hit near-adult levels. I had my own apartment over an hour from Wilder Mountain (long story). I managed my own schedule, and got home whenever I damn well pleased since Pa Wilder visited only three nights a week (Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday) and he left all the fun nights for me.
Some people call me the space cowboy. I wish they would stop. My name is John.
Sometimes I was home just after practice. Sometimes, I was home at 3am after doing, well, other things. No curfew, no check-ins, just me against the world.
Was I unusual in having my (mostly) own place? Sure.
But the freedom? That was standard issue for Gen X. Even before I could drive, I would bolt out the door at sunrise and not return until the streetlights flickered on. No helicopter parents hovering like drones, tracking every move with an app or scheduling athletic events. Nope.
Contrast that with the childhood scripted for kids today.
It is structured from dawn to dusk, every moment scheduled like a corporate meeting. Playdates? Organized by committee. Sports? Leagues with participation trophies for showing up. Even recess is micromanaged, with rubberized playgrounds that cushion every tumble. And do not get me started on the deprivation of schoolyard fights and bullying, which back in the day were ritualized tests of mettle to place yourself in the hierarchy.
Places to test yourself. Like the Olympics®.
Freshman initiation in high school was a rite of passage, not a crime. Upperclassmen would haze the newbies with pranks: carrying books, silly chants, maybe a wedgie or two. No gross abuse, just enough strain to test character to see how you’d take it.
If you performed well under pressure?
Instant respect.
Fold like a cheap suit? Okay, it was tougher. They had to learn resilience the hard way. And fights?
They happened.
Teachers often let them play out just as long as they had to go as long as no real damage was being done. A bloody nose or a black eye, then it was over. Often, the combatants were friends afterwards, hierarchy established, testosterone balanced, respect earned: male bonding at its rawest.
Paul wrote a book on walking to avoid sandworms. It was a step-by-step guide.
These rituals, in moderation, built toughness. They taught that pain passes, conflicts resolve, and life demands honor. Bruises faded, but the lessons stuck. Parents? They never heard about it. A fistfight? So what? Boys will be boys.
Today? Heaven forbid a scuffle breaks out in a school (at least a middle-class white majority school). It is not a learning moment; it is a federal case. Suspension, counseling, parental conferences, maybe even charges. Zero tolerance turns into zero growth, however, since kids are shielded from every scrape, every failure, every real consequence.
The world they inherit is virtual, endless screens feeding dopamine hits without risk. Social media wars replace playground brawls, but the scars are deeper: anxiety, isolation, fear of the unknown. Many of these kids have never cold approached a woman and asked for a date.
Part of the point is learning to fail when the stakes are low. A lost fight in fifth grade? Big deal, you dust off and try again. A botched initiation? You toughen up for next time. She said, “No, you’re not my type, I prefer men with two eyebrows?” Fine. There are more girls.
I mean, if Soros can get a date . . .
These situations, however, build the muscle to handle adult life without crumbling. Fear becomes a tool, not a tyrant. But cloister kids too long, and they enter the world paralyzed. The Mrs. nailed it when we were talking yesterday: ” . . . if they (kids) cannot handle solving teenage problems, they will commit atrocities as adults.”
I liked that line so much I made her text it to me.
He also needs some smokes and a pepperoni. I know at least one person found this hilarious.
Unresolved fears fester into rage, leading kids to lash out at a world they never learned to navigate.
Look around at the twisted landscape of 2025:
Weakness is a result raising children in bubbles. No free-range exploration, no unsupervised adventures, no low-stakes failures to forge resilience and enough scar tissue to toughen the kid up. Instead, society offers them therapy and pills paper over the cracks and pay for the therapist’s BMW® payment.
The solution is simple.
Face the fear, let it pass, emerge stronger. Let kids roam, fight, fail, and fix their own messes. Strip away the structure, the screens, the safety nets. Teach them that bruises heal, but cowardice cripples. Otherwise, we breed a nation of mind-killed adults, obliterated by the little-deaths of unchecked terror who will do anything because they have faith in absolutely nothing.
One way or another, courage will return, if not because we shatter the bubble, it will because it collapses under the weight of fear. And then?
We’ll have to face our fears.
First, you can now find Western Rifle Shooters HERE or you can press the button.
Second, no proper post today. I’m feeling a bit tired and under the weather. Back to a proper post on Friday.
Third, no podcast tonight – have business a bit out of town.
Enjoy!
“Three minutes. This is it. The beginning. Ground zero. I think this is about where we came in.” – Fight Club
In the beginning, there was nothing. God said, “Let there be light.” There was still nothing, but now you could see it.
Volume VII, Issue 5
Most memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”. I have moved the Clock O’Doom to 9., given the open support of assassination and criminality by the GloboLeft and the increase in violence as well as direct interference with ICE and the insertion of the military into law enforcement. Beware: the number can climb quickly.
My advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.
In this issue: Front Matter – The End of the Beginning – Violence and Censorship Update – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Unravelling – 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.
The End of the Beginning
Things don’t start up all at once. I believe the start of Civil War 2.0 will start with the tensions that came from the election of Donald Trump in 2016. The real beginning of the war, I think historians will date as the attempted assassination of then presidential candidate Trump back in 2024.
I was shocked, but in retrospect this is the inevitable end of the years of GloboLeftist rhetoric on their unstable and mentally ill followers. I believe the assassination of Charlie Kirk was, to quote Churchill, “the end of the beginning.” Alone, this single act has changed the way millions feel.
We are now in a Sitzkrieg – a war, but a war where no one is really wanting to take action. Keep in mind, there is really no doubt about how the GloboLeft feel about you and everyone to the right of Mr. Rogers™. They want you dead and will celebrate the moment that it happens. Don’t believe me?
Overtly political violence from the GloboLeft continues. The GloboLeftists are dismayed every time that one of theirs is found to be killing. Why? Because, even now, they’re focused on removing guns from the hands of citizens – again, you and I. When a GloboLeftist or one of their criminal pets is again shown to be a murderer, it just makes bitter clingers to God and the Second Amendment like me cling just a bit tighter to my guns.
Because I can see that
Violence and Censorship Update
Violence leads again this month. And this is a month where Charlie Kirk was right: America will never be the same.
And GloboLeftists are reveling in it:
No one involved in the story below is American. Why do we bring this violence to our heartland?
Elon knows.
Oh, and murder runs in the family. Wonder how soon both of these budding doctors will be back on the street?
And the Dallas shooter who kept shooting illegal aliens rather the ICE officers he was aiming at?
And who, exactly, wanted to shut down communications around the United Nations?
The “British” Prime Minister indicates that British people are “the enemy” if they won’t call a mouse born in a stable a horse. This folks, is why you never give up your guns.
Meanwhile, all the GloboLeftists that openly celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk are getting fired because they have never had to stand up for their beliefs before.
Yeah, only one of them is fired, but if they were,
would anyone notice?
And, no, this is different.
Misery Index
The new Trump administration is shown in red. Results continue to be much better than Biden’s misery numbers as Trump’s policies apparently have been stunning at reversing the tide. We’ll see, as the long-term trend is not good.
Updated Civil War II Index
The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time. They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings. As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that combine to become the index. On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.
Violence:
Violence indicators are up significantly this month. No surprises there.
Political Instability:
Down is more stable, and it went up this month.
Economic:
The economy is down a bit this month.
Illegal Aliens:
Still the lowest level since the Weather Report started. Remember, they care nothing for our country, nothing for our history, and only want money and political power. This apparently includes Ben Shapiro.
The Unravelling
It really started with the lawfare attacks on Trump. Presidents had been considered mostly off limits to the legal process once they left office. Why? Perhaps a feeling that they had done their bit. Presidents also (mainly) shut up and didn’t criticize those that followed them with notable exceptions (Obama, I’m looking at you.)
With the GloboLeftElite going after Trump with every possible lawsuit or charge they could make up, Trump really didn’t have an option – his best defense was an offense. The man had nothing to lose, and a list of people who had done him wrong. Thus, Comey is the first of many who will likely be indicted for their behavior.
Since most of the indictments will be in 97% Globalist Leftist Washington, D.C., it’s nearly certain that a jury will clear Comey for political reasons. But the fight is going to the states as well, with California and Illinois being the frontline of places where the state governments are attempting to support illegal aliens and drug cartels.
The end though, is that the Democratic Party has devolved to the point where it is led by a group of people who hate America, and hate everything it stands for, and won’t rest until it’s been “fundamentally transformed” – and they’re getting what they wanted, because it’s all unravelling now.
My bet is they won’t like the outcome when it’s all done.
LINKS
The links are again done by Ricky this month. Thanks, Ricky!
BAD GUYS
https://x.com/Bubblebathgirl/status/1970724231043318137
https://x.com/toddstarnes/status/1967302012154036378
https://people.com/2-people-killed-multiple-others-injured-mass-shooting-alabama-11824522
https://x.com/EYakoby/status/1968519351922749609
GOOD GUYS
https://x.com/davidmedinapdx/status/1974350245544054822
https://x.com/TONYxTWO/status/1974668656413233453
ONE GUY
https://www.wrdw.com/2025/09/12/2-cleared-killing-14-year-old-case-ruled-self-defense/
BODY COUNT
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/peak-population-but-we-can-all-move-to-texas/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/these-are-largest-immigrant-groups-america
https://www.statista.com/chart/35050/overdose-deaths-involving-different-drugs/
https://www.statista.com/chart/16647/the-lifetime-odds-of-dying-from-selected-causes/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/planning-war-against-fascists-socialist-rifle-association-boasts-10000-members
https://archive.ph/orABm
VOTE COUNT
https://headlineusa.com/new-election-integrity-czar-recepits
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/right-wing-groups-press-election-agency-on-proof-citizenship-rule-for-voter-registration/
https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/10/04/federal-requirement-for-proof-of-citizenship-to-vote-could-arrive/
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/justice-department-has-demanded-voter-files-least-21-states
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-the-trump-administration-is-trying-to-change-the-way-people-vote
CIVIL WAR – OVER HERE
https://alt-market.us/men-of-the-west-we-are-at-war/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/transgender-shooter-socialist-rifle-association-and-alarming-rise-far-left-militancy
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/white-house-plans-security-boost-civil-terrorism-fears-after-fbi-investigates
https://www.csis.org/analysis/left-wing-terrorism-and-political-violence-united-states-what-data-tells-us
https://www.kunstler.com/p/the-big-lebowski-civil-war
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/technology/charlie-kirk-shooting-civil-war.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/us/politics/charlie-kirk-voters-politics-violence.html
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2025-09-27/prelude-second-civil-war
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2025/09/14/images-words-narratives-matter/
CIVIL WAR – OVER THERE
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/09/europe_is_a_powder_keg.html
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/09/03/britains-descent-towards-civil-war-is-no-accident/
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2025/09/08/dont-uk-the-usa-n2662867
https://www.the-express.com/news/world-news/182851/russia-drone-hunt-ukraine-children
“I like them French fried potaters.” – Sling Blade
Back when Will Smith was punching aliens and not rocks.
As I noted in the past, I’ve decided to stop mining the 1970s. The fall off in quality as you go backwards from 1980 is immense. Yes, there were gems. But they were surrounded by so much . . . crap.
As it is, we’re moving forward into 1996. The glory years of the 1980s are gone, but the indy buzz of the 1990s is in full swing and 1996 was an amazing year for movies as far as originality and watchability, far better than 1995.
As usual, no sequels, and in no particular order:
Is this how they got the idea for Dumb and Dumber?
Bio-Dome – Bio-Dome is a silly movie starring Pauly Shore, and you’ll be stupider for having watched it if you can find it since the UN has classified it as a banned weapon. It has been known to take 10 IQ points off of a typical human. It is considered “one of the worst films ever made,” which is an achievement in itself.
Boy, that Seonge Glodney can act!
From Dusk till Dawn – I had no idea what to expect when I rented this one. Did I expect vampires? Yes. Did I expect vampires meeting Pulp Fiction and El Mariachi? No. Would I change anything about this movie? Also no.
I am Roboholio! I need sprockets for my screwhole!
Screamers – Philp K. Dick wrote the original story that this screenplay was based on. The film lost money, so you might not even have heard of this one. The original story is far darker, and I think I like it even better than the movie, which is just okay.
Well, now as an animated children’s movie . . .
Broken Arrow – When John Travolta attempts to play a smart guy and Christian Slater attempts to play an upstanding guy, you know you have two actors playing parts that they are fundamentally unsuited for. Of course it made $150 million, but it was the start of Travolta’s box office decline.
“Give me flank speed, Niles.” “Oh, are you sure you want that, Frasier? You know how motion sick you get.”
Down Periscope – Stupid humor. Lots of jokes about female breasts and tattoos on delicate areas. Kelsey Grammer. Rob Schneider. Yes, it lost money. Yes, it’s also funnier than any movie so far this year.
This movie probably would have been worse than Bio-Dome.
Fargo – A movie about an insurance salesman (John Wayne) who is caught up in an existential crisis about his wife (Jane Seymour) and her affair with a younger woman (Gillian Anderson).
The executive decision? Takeout Italian or Burger King®, again. Seagal wants Burger King™. Again.
Executive Decision – Kurt Russell. Of course I’m going to mention this. It’s an okay generic action movie, but the funniest part is that they changed the script to kill off Steven Seagal because he was such a dick to work with and everyone hated him. Allegedly.
The Truth About Romulans and Gorns?
The Truth About Cats & Dogs – A retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac, but involving Uma Thurman at her cutest and Janene Garafalo before she revealed she was insane. A rom-com, back when they did such things.
Where does Amber Heard sit on a boat? On the poop deck.
Dead Man – A black and white Western with Johnny Depp, Iggy Pop, Crispin Glover, and Gabriel Byrne? I caught this on HBO® and was mesmerized. I don’t want to watch it again to spoil it, since I enjoyed it so much the first time. Odd film, very odd. They spent $9 million on it, and the box office was $1 million, so I might have been the only one watching it after my Tivo® suggested it for me.
Run, it’s weather!
Twister – A movie about the weather. Yeah, whatever. It was okay. Made half a billion dollars in 1996, no less. I still miss Bill Paxton.
I think Cage is now contractually required to play all supporting parts in his movies as well.
The Rock – What if James Bond was put into a US prison. That’s basically the plot of this movie, with Sean Connery (before he lost the ability to be alive) and Nicolas Cage (before he lost the ability to say “no”). An okay movie. Also? Stupidest warhead design, ever. Movie made a third of a billion bucks.
They’ve come across the galaxy. Their goal? To knock things off of the counter.
Independence Day – Is it a disaster movie or science fiction movie or an action-adventure buddy picture? Why not all three? This movie hit, and hit big, pulling in nearly a billion dollars on . . . a silly plot where an Apple® notebook saves the day because alien computers don’t have a Norton™ Antivirus© subscription.
Vaderspotting?
Trainspotting – This movie features Obi-Wan Kenobi as a Scottish heroin addict who cuts off the legs of his best friend who then becomes the right-hand man of the Emperor of Scotland. It’s depressing, mostly, so it was ranked by 150 film insiders as the “10th best British film ever” which I assume would be after everything that Rowan Atkinson was in.
If you get a job as an Egyptian god, you’re Set for life.
The Trigger Effect – Most movies don’t get TEOTWAWKI right, and The Trigger Effect is no different, but it has Elizabeth Shue in it. You can at least stare at her for a while as Los Angeles collapses when the electricity goes out.
Bart discovers the martini.
Swingers – Gen X dating angst in an artsy indy movie that made 20x the production costs. I enjoyed it, but I was a Gen X dude dating at the time.
I reckon there’s a reason they didn’t make this one. Spoiler, they just let him out again and he kills someone else. Again.
Sling Blade – “Uh-huh, I reckon I shore would like some mustard with my biscuits. Some folks calls it a pizza cutter. I calls it a ring blade.” Not a good date movie, apparently. Which is good for me because some other guy took The Mrs. to this one on a date, and that was their first and last date.
Honorable Mention: Happy Gilmore, The Frighteners, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Beavis and Butthead Do America, The Arrival.
Okay, I got enough good movies out of 1997 to try again with 1997
*Chocolate not included.
Streams will show up at 9EDT (click the link below), that’s in just under an hour! (and we typically pregame for five minutes, so it really starts up at 8:55PM)
Funniest News On the ‘Net.
In this episode:
“We’ll just double time it to your house, and grab the tickets before heading to the train station for the 3:45 to DETROIT! ROCK! CITY!” – Detroit Rock City
When they filmed one of the battle scenes for a Transformers movie in Detroit, they had to use half of the CGI budget to repair buildings.
Wealth.
It’s the golden goose that societies have all chased, but most forget where the eggs come from. I assure you it’s no longer Detroit, but we’ll get to that.
Spoiler: it’s not just the land, the trees, or the shiny rocks or sticky fluids underground. Sure, Saudi Arabia’s sitting on enough oil to lube up Oprah with enough left over for a dozen Kardashians, but without the brainpower to drill, refine, and ship it, they’d still be herding camels and wondering what a Ferrari is.
The same goes for North America. For millennia the fertile plains forests were untouched. It was a backwater until European misfits turned it into the world’s breadbasket and factory floor.
Wealth isn’t just stuff; it’s the ingenuity, sweat, and sheer cussedness of people making things happen. The dirt’s nice, don’t get me wrong, and someone, somewhere has to have it or else things would get mighty hungry might fast. Iowa’s black soil grows corn like it’s auditioning for a role in a Monsanto® ad as a glyphosate-absorbing sponge. Canada? Canada’s got enough timber so it could stack it up and reach the Moon. They also have nearly that many Indians.
Two peanuts walked into a bar. And that’s why Monsanto™ has to be stopped.
But Japan? Japan is a rocky island with zero oil, barely any farmland, and a tendency to shake like a wet dog every few years. Yet it’s a global powerhouse, punching well above the weight of its country’s size or population.
Why? The people.
Same with England, Singapore, Taiwan. No natural resources to speak of, but their folks figured out how to turn ideas into skyscrapers, cars, and microchips. Even Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth wasn’t something the Saudis turned into wealth. It was a group of Western engineers and wildcatters that turned that black liquid into gold.
Without them, the Saudis might still be sitting on a lake of useless sludge, arguing over whose camel was the best hump.
North America is the same story, minus the camel arguments. For thousands of years, the continent had everything: buffalo, forests, rivers teeming with fish. Yet, outside of some Mesoamerican skull-stacking enthusiasts in Mexico, it was dangerous and dirt-poor. Why?
Is a monk with wings an air friar?
That’s a big question, because just a few years later the Europeans showed up. They brought the tools, the technology, and most importantly the mindset to make the place a source of plenty. By the 19th century, the U.S. was feeding and arming half the world, not because the land changed, but because people did.
They built railroads, factories, and a culture that rewarded hard work over siestas and skull collecting. Wealth exploded.
For a while.
The GloboLeft thinks wealth comes from a magical printing press. Since the Soviet Union keeled over in 1991, the world has belonged to the U.S. dollar: print it, spend it, everybody loves it. But cash is most definitely not wealth: at best, it’s just a scorecard. Real wealth comes from production: making stuff, growing stuff, inventing stuff and developing a moral and trustworthy people.
But now we’re spending our wealth on things that actively destroy the system.
I did once get a three-foot ruler at a yard sale.
Take immigration. Please.
Unchecked waves of illegals, incentivized to cross borders with freebies? Not good. Legal immigrants who think that Western values are an outmoded suggestion that only naïve people would follow?
That’s not a workforce; it’s a drain.
Then there’s the family fiasco. Single-parent households are mostly moms with no dads. These mom-led houses represent 65% of black kids and 24% of white kids growing up fatherless in 2020.
The GloboLeft cheers this like it’s fEmALe EmPOwErmENt, but kids without dads are far more likely to drop out, do drugs, or end up in jail. That’s not building a trustworthy people: it’s building chaos. A stable family is like a factory for productive citizens: break it, and you’re churning out liabilities, not assets. This is yet another reason I keep banging on the “the family is the base unit of society, not the individual” drum.
In Oklahoma cowboys don’t roll joints – they tumble weed.
We actively pay people to not work. The Social Security Administration reports disability claims have spiked 20% since 2000, with over 8 million Americans on the rolls by 2023. Some are legitimate. Nobody’s knocking the guy who lost a leg in a mill accident (his name is Skip, by the way), but when “anxiety” qualifies you for a lifetime of checks, we’re paying people to sit on the couch instead of building bridges. That’s wealth destruction, plain and simple.
Healthcare? That’s another black hole. The U.S. spends 18% of GDP on it. $4.5 trillion in 2022. That’s more than any other nation.
Yet, we get crap for it. Life expectancy is flat, and obesity is up 40% since 1990. We’re not paying to make people healthier: we’re bankrolling a system that patches symptoms while folks chug Mountain Dew® and avoid treadmills. A healthy population works harder, lives longer, creates more, and is happier. A sick one? It’s a money pit.
All this anti-wealth nonsense is sold as compassion. Free money, open borders, no-fault welfare? It sounds warm and fuzzy until you realize it’s starving the engine that makes societies thrive. Wealth isn’t the goal. Wealth is the fuel for a happy, healthy, productive life. Without it, you get decay, both literal and figurative. Look at Detroit: once a manufacturing titan, now a ghost town because the focus shifted from making to taking, complete with a demoralized population.
Feel like no one gives a hoot about you? Try not filing your tax returns.
So how do we get back on track?
Stop pretending money equals wealth. Reward production. Cut the incentives for idleness; if you can work, you should. Fix families by making it easier for dads to stick around and reducing the incentives for women to break up a family for fun and prizes. Make being a whore shameful again.
Streamline healthcare to focus on prevention, not endless treatments – 30% or so of what will be spent on a human for healthcare during their entire lifetime is in the last year – wouldn’t it be better if their last decade was better?
And secure the borders—nations that can’t control their edges can’t control their economies. Almost every economic problem this country has is downstream of immigration.
Wealth isn’t in the dirt or the printing press; it’s in the people who turned dirt into crops, ideas into empires.
Let’s stop subsidizing sloth and start hammering out real wealth again. Otherwise, we’re just paving our roads with good intentions.
And we all know where that leads.
Hell, it leads to Hell.
Or Detroit.
Back with the regular nonsense on Wednesday.
