Iran So Far Away: Million-Dollar Bombs Versus $3,000 Drones and Day 23 of the 4 Day Operation to Liberate Iran

“This film is only for Madagascar and Iran, neither of which accept American copyright law.” – Bowfinger

I’ve heard that if a golf ball lands on a house, it’s scored as a home-in-one. (all memes as-found)

If you were sleeping under a rock (not the iRaq©, which has been officially purchased by Apple®) The United States and Israel dropped a surprise airstrike package on Iran like it was Amazon Prime® Day for regime change.

Supreme Leader Khamenei? Gone.

Nuclear sites? Smoking craters.

Military bases? Swiss cheese.

Iran fired back with hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles at Israel and pretty much every country in the neighborhood from Bahrain to Qatar. I’m especially offended by Qatar, because if a word has a “Q” in it, it should have a “U” as well. Qatar. That’s just wrong, man. It bothers me enough that I think they should kick Qatar out of the UN, but the argument against that is that it’s an unnecessary Qatar solo.

Vlad the Impaler’s favorite joke starts this way: “So this bar goes into this guy…”

Back to the war. Er, special military operation. It’s still early in the game, but in true 2020s fashion, the winners so far seem to be no one except the guys selling missile insurance and the printers at the Federal Reserve©.

Are we done yet? No, we’re not. So, let’s look at The Bad and The Good, at least so far.

The Bad

Energy prices are exploding upward faster than a Houthi suicide bomber on Red Bull®.

Oil is headed toward levels so high I won’t be able to bathe in it anymore, feeling the luxury of 10-W40 as it coats every inch of my skin. I remember when crude oil was cheap enough I could afford to fill my pool with it.

Sadly, those days are gone. Brent crude (a proxy for crude oil that shows up on a ship) is up over 40 percent since the strikes started. Analysts are whispering $110-plus if they have bought futures, and I’ve heard that it might go higher, still.

High energy prices act like an immediate tax increase on everything except paper straws in plastic wrappers in California. Periodically purchased Pringles®? Pricier. Pickles? Pricier. Plaster of Paris? Pricey. PEZ® is even presently a pretty penny purchase.

Oh, wait, pennies are too expensive to make.

I think King Arthur would be interested in this, since at either end they’d need a place to park, which would mean two places called Camelot.

Meanwhile the United States is burning through billions of dollars of precision munitions that take years to manufacture just to turn perfectly good Iranian concrete into expensive Iranian gravel. Concrete costs a few hundred bucks per cubic yard and you can pour a bunch in an afternoon if there are enough Mexicans around.

Our missiles? Millions per missile and the supply line is months to years for even the ones that keep missing the Iranian missiles.

I make it a point never to scream into a colander, since it might strain my voice.

Iran, on the other hand, is lobbing $3,000 drones that somehow managed to damage a $14 billion natural gas facility that took a decade to design and build. We brought a sledgehammer made of gold. They bring the fly swatter made of spite after decades of sanctions required that they work with nothing.

The policy is deeply unpopular with the American public. Polls show most people want nothing to do with this adventure except the tar and feather merchants who are prepping for higher tar prices, but think that feathers may come down enough so they can make a profit.

That face you make when you swap out something 80% of the American public are for versus something that 16% are for.

Iran is sucking all the oxygen out of the room and taking the focus off domestic issues like making beer cheaper or figuring out how to get illegal aliens and H-1B visa holders to stop turning the United States into either Guatemala or Mumbai.

Instead? We are arguing about whether blowing up another desert dictatorship is worth another trillion we do not have, which is gonna go great at the polls come November.

The Good

Every cloud has a silver lining, even when the cloud is radioactive fallout.

This mess is making my prediction (it’s in writing here on the site, but I’m too lazy to look it up) that the national debt doubles every eight years look less like a prediction and more like a weather forecast. In truth, it is that, since I can do math and see that, yeah, every 8 years the national debt has doubled since 1973.

The bright side of this debt? At least half of us get shiny new dollars to spend every eight years instead of those boring old dollars. Inflation is just another word for free money!

Last year, I could walk into the store with $100 and walk out with 50 pounds of ribeye. Not now. They installed security cameras.

I have been rough on Qatar so far, but one citizen from that nation may be of use in regime change in Iran due to the dire straits of the current situation. They should check out Qatar George, he knows all the Kurds.

If we play our cards right, Iran may follow through on its threats to take India, Africa, and the Pakistanis off the Internet, and remove them from all electronic communications. Hey, that is a public service more useful than anything Congress has done in years. No more spam scam calls from overseas call centers.

As a bonus, Pakistan has already hinted that since it cannot hit the United States directly it will nuke India instead if things get spicy. So, what exactly is the downside of that?

India would probably try to scam free Internet from Australia, which would come from a LAN down under.

Another bright spot is that we now know that Chinese air defense systems are as effective as barbells on a space station. Iran uses plenty of Beijing’s hardware and it did not exactly shine against American and Israeli jets. People in Taiwan should sleep easier tonight. If the Chinese who would invade them are equipped with the same made-in-China wonders, the invasion fleet might sink when it hits the water.

Shipping is getting a makeover too. Many tankers are now taking the long way around Africa instead of the Strait of Hormuz. This will be nice because it will allow cheese to age properly on the extra weeks at sea. Real cheddar needs time, and is not a rush job. The downside? Somalian pirates will not be able to steal and hijack as much cargo, so they will be forced to open more Learing Centers®.

Melons have traditional weddings. They cantaloupe.

Finally, what happens if the A.I. boom collapses because the market tanks and liquidity dries up? This is perfect. The Federal Reserve© could print even more money to paper it over. Then they could roll out trackable Central Bank Digital Currency to replace the failed dollar. Who could lose with that? My every purchase monitored for wrongthink while the dollar dies like a good idea on Facebook®.

It’s a win-win for the surveillance state, we’re all poor and can’t have privacy!

The real bright spot after all this is that I did find out the difference between Qatar and Abu Dhabi. In Qatar, watching The Flintstones is not allowed, but the people of Abu Dhabi do.

The Dog Ate My Homework Again!

I was planning on a post, but, again, my day didn’t allow time to get my notes together.  And, though I don’t plan to make it a habit, there is the possibility that it’ll be more memes next Friday.  We’ll see.

Stay safe out there, and drive off the top half of your tank.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Housing Mess of 2026: At Least We Have Ramen

“They’re only noodles, Micheal.” – The Lost Boys

I entered a contest and won a lifetime supply of ramen.  I took the $20 instead.

Let’s start with the sliver of good news, because in this market it’s rare enough to mention:  Many illegals have left the country.  Not enough, mind you, but enough to show just how fake this economy is.  The result is real.  Rents are down where illegals live.

At least a little.  I found a great place to rent, fully furnished, but then the clerk told me it was a liquor store.

Sigh.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development to straight-up say illegals drove up to two-thirds of rental demand growth in recent years, so when .gov admits the problem, you know it’s really worse.  After years of unrestricted immigration flooding the rental market, the brakes got tapped.  Studies show that renter household growth cooled once immigration restrictions hit.

Average rent that hovering around $2,000 a month are finally showing some give instead of the nonstop 36% climb we saw the last five years.  This is, at least a small win for the working guy who just wants to keep the roof over his head while he eats ramen and smokes recreational weed.

Now the bad news.

And there’s plenty of bad news.

Housing is now unaffordable to Gen Z, and it is far worse as a percentage of their income than for any previous generation.  67% of Gen Z adults say they’re struggling to cover housing costs. That’s higher than Millennials (53%), Gen X (54%), or Boomers (36%).

When I grounded my Gen Z kids, their punishment was to go out and socialize. (meme as-found)

Homeownership for Gen Z sits at just 27.1% in 2025 data rolling into this year, which is a tiny bump from the year before, but miles behind where previous generations stood at the same age.  Zoomers need to earn over $112,000 a year to afford the median house.

The problem?  Median household income lags by about $25,000.  Nearly two million young households simply vanished from the market in 2025 because the math doesn’t work.  Housing is chewing up 40-50% of take-home pay.  That’s not a stepping stone to a family and 2.6 kids.  That’s a millstone.

Let’s delve deeper into the problem.

First, housing areas are limited, and the mass blight of urban hellscapes led to the creation and flowering of suburbia, where people could move and raise a family in relative safety.  Let’s be honest, a huge part of suburbia was economic segregation from . . . economic factors.  Suburbs?  You have to have a certain income level to live there.

When I think about the meaning of life, I think about three factors:  2, 3, and 7. (cartoon as-found)

Good schools.  Low crime.  Space to breathe.  No economic factors.

That flight from the cities created the demand, but supply never kept up.  Zoning, NIMBYs, and decades of stupid policy turned safe family neighborhoods into a scarce luxury good.  Housing prices have risen much more than inflation. While wages wobbled along like me on a Saturday night, home values sprinted like me out of the office on Friday afternoon.  Suburbia went from attainable dream to gated fortress most young people can only stare at through the fence.

Second, interest rates are up.  That’s the sort of thing that happens when the cash printer is on high and the oil pump is on low.  Higher interest rates lead to higher home costs for the same price house, as interest eats up more and more of the (now higher) payment.

Mortgage rates eased to around 6.2% by the end of 2025, but that’s still double the pandemic-era giveaway lows.  A $400,000 house that felt doable at 3% now demands a monthly payment that feels like indentured servitude.  Equity builds slower.  Gen Z runs the numbers on their phones and decide roommates, ramen, and the low-rizz life beat the alternative.

Third, houses are treated like an economic appreciation machine whose values never go down. This has led to many borrowers taking out loans near the peak value of their houses, and that peak value locks them in.  If they sell at a loss, they lose actual money, so they can’t sell for less than they owe.

We’re actually at an all-time high for the Google® search term “can’t sell my house.”  Google Trends just hit record levels in February 2026:  higher than 2008, higher than the COVID frenzy.  Sellers are frozen.  Buyers can’t bridge the gap.  The shut down like a date with a Kardashian when you tell them you’re broke.  Houses stopped being homes and turned into leveraged bets on eternal growth.

Markets don’t do eternal.

“There are no mistakes, just happy little accidents.”  Bob was a horrible nuclear physicist.

Fourth, banks don’t want foreclosures to hit the market. Why? It makes the rest of the loans in their portfolio worth less, so they’re incentivized to sit on houses rather than sell them and realize the loss on the books.  Foreclosure filings jumped 14% in 2025 to 367,460 properties, but that’s still historically low and banks are dragging their feet with modifications and delays.  How much of the current private credit crisis is due to just this?  My guess is:  plenty.  Those balance sheets are stuffed with crappy paper because it was different this time.

Fifth, those nice suburban houses with a thirty minute to sixty-minute commute are now even more expensive because the fuel to drive to where the jobs are at is much higher thanks to Gulf War IV. Or is it Gulf War VI?  I forget.  That suburban split-level two towns over suddenly costs a fortune just to reach.  The effective price of the dream just went up again.

The result of this mess is that Gen Z gets further behind.  The kids that should be having kids aren’t.  There are several factors to this, especially female hypergamy where every female (thinks she) is above average, but every male is below her standards.  But the sheer difficulty in having a home in which to raise kids is massive is also killing family formation.  No stability, no backyard, no “let’s start a family” talk that ends in anything but spreadsheets that fill with negative numbers.

Is a 4 with a 6-pack a perfect 10?

Birth rates keep dropping.  In one generation, we went from the GloboLeftElite telling us to stop having kids because “the planet can’t handle more!” to the GloboLeftElite telling us we need to import kids because we need workers.

They break the system, then demand more system to patch the system they created.  Young couples look at the numbers and decide “maybe later.”  Or never.  Unless they’re from (spins wheel) Somalia.  In that case, it’s free fun and prizes while you bring in an alien people with an alien religion.

The good news?

This type of mess always sorts itself out.  The cure for high prices is default and deflation.  If the market is too far cooked, well, look out below.  The United States doesn’t have magic dirt to turn Somalis into Americans, and houses aren’t magic wealth machines.  When enough locked-in owners and over-leveraged banks finally crack, inventory floods, prices reset, and affordability returns.

It won’t be pretty.  Foreclosures will spike.  Portfolios will bleed.  Credit markets may lock up.  The Google® searches for “can’t sell my house” will turn into actual sales at prices that make sense again.

I used to have a really funny polio joke, but no one gets it anymore.

A housing crisis wouldn’t be big for the country, would it?

Nah. Just trillions in pretend wealth gone, generational transfers halted, and the kind of reset that makes 2008 look like practice.

Prepare accordingly.  The reset is coming.

I’m glad I like ramen.

The Oil Shock of 2026: Pulp Fiction Economics

“Oh, man, I shot Marvin in the face.” – Pulp Fiction

Trump outlawed the selling of shredded cheese.  He wants to make America grate again. (all memes as-found)

Am I the only one who feels like the global economy just got Tarantino’d?

One minute it’s business as usual, the next there’s blood on the walls, or in this case, oil not flowing through the pipes.  We’re staring down the barrel of an oil shock that makes the 1970s look like a minor hiccup.

The Strait of Hormuz?

It was effectively slammed shut by the Iranians amid the escalating mess with the U.S. and Israel.  That narrow choke point between Iran and Oman used to carry about 20 million barrels per day (liters per lightyear, for you Europeans) of crude and products.

That’s roughly 20% of the world’s daily oil consumption as of early 2026. Or I should say carried, past tense.

Now?  Zilch.  Null.  Nada.  Empty set.  Nothing.

The taps are off, and we’re talking a sudden removal of around 15-20 million barrels per day (Coulombs per gram) from the global market, depending on how you slice the crude from the refined stuff.

The reason that Saudi Arabia has so much money isn’t because oil is expensive, but because they don’t let women spend money.

Oil prices are set at the margin.

It’s not just about the total supply the price is set by that last barrel that tips the scale.  The world was already humming along at with supply keeping pace thanks to OPEC cuts, U.S. fracking miracles, and a dash of South American output from places like Guyana and Brazil, which apparently produce more than just horrific tropical diseases.

But shutting down 15 million barrels overnight?

That’s not a dip; that’s a crater.  Prices don’t nudge up politely, they spike like a heart rate after too much coffee when this level of supply is cut.  Oil isn’t just black gold for the gas tank of the Wildertruck®:  it’s woven into every thread of modern life like pop culture.

When Fonzie’s motorcycle breaks does he call Triple-Ayyyy?

Plastics? Oil.

Transport? Trucks, ships, planes all guzzle it.

Heating an East Coast home in winter? Oil or derivatives.

Lubrication for machines that make everything from iPhones® to insulin?  Yep, oil again.

When the price jumps it acts like a stealth tax on every single human activity that involves moving atoms around.  We’ve already seen Brent crude north of $120 a barrel, with whispers of $150 if this drags on.  Groceries will cost more because trucks burn fuel.  Manufacturing grinds slower because inputs skyrocket.  Even that Amazon® package shows up later and at a higher price.

Historically, high energy prices have been a tyrant’s best friend.  Cheap energy?  That’s freedom fuel.  It lets people build, innovate, travel, and produce wealth without begging the government for handouts.  Low prices mean less dependence on central planners I can heat my home, drive to work, and fill my tank without the state holding the reins.

But jack up those prices?  Wealth creation stalls.  People cut back on extras, then necessities. Factories idle.  Jobs vanish.  Suddenly, the masses are clamoring for subsidies, price controls, “emergency” aid.

I found out if I replace my coffee with green tea I lose 74% of my enjoyment of life.

Governments love that.  It’s their cue to step in as savior, doling out favors while tightening the leash.  Look at the 1970s:  oil shocks led to inflation, stagflation, and a bigger welfare state.

We’re just at the front end of this beast.  The 1970s shocks were bad.  Prices quadrupled, lines at pumps, recessions, and worst of all, Jimmy Carter.

But back then, the world consumed only 60 million barrels per day (meters per kilogram). Now it’s almost twice that, economies are more interconnected, and just-in-time supply chains mean there’s no inventory to pick up the slack.

The Strait of Hormuz is (was) one of the most strategic spots on the planet. Easiest way to move oil?  Pipelines, if you’ve got ‘em.  Second?  Water.  It’s more convenient for collection if you use tankers rather than just pouring it on the water.  And Hormuz was the biggest funnel: about 20% of global consumption squeezed through that 21-mile-wide gap at its narrowest.  Talk about a speed zone.

I don’t understand time zones.  In Europe it’s today, in Australia, it’s tomorrow, and in Iran it’s 832 A.D.

That oil won’t stay stuck forever my 50-50 guess is two months.  After that, either cooler heads prevail and it reopens, or the Saudis and others pivot hard.  They’ve got some bypass pipelines already but capacity is limited.  Building more is feasible, but we’re talking billions and years, not weeks.  In the meantime, producers like Saudi, Iraq, Kuwait are stuffing oil into storage tanks that are filling up fast.

Economic cracks are showing everywhere.  Last week, I mentioned the private credit markets imploding with funds like BlackRock® limiting redemptions because liquidity’s drying up.

Now add this oil shock?

A.I. is already sucking up capital like a vacuum on steroids.  But cash for everything else has been scarce.  Billions in private debt funds are wobbling because borrowers can’t refinance at these rates, and higher energy costs will be the final nail for some.

Expect more gates slamming shut, more “sorry, your money’s stuck here” letters.

Gasoline prices are up here in the U.S., sure.  Last I heard we were headed to $4.50 a gallon as an average, while pushing $6 in California.  Compared to the rest of the world, this is a sweet spot.  Thanks to fracking, the U.S. produces about two-thirds of the crude we consume, with most imports coming from Mexico and Canada.

This hurts us, but tis but a flesh wound compared to the gut punch for Europe and China.

A question from Iran:  “Is it okay to sleep with your third cousin?  I mean, if you’ve stopped sleeping with the other two?”

Europe?  They’re getting hammered.  They were already weaning off Russian oil post-Ukraine, now Middle East flows disrupted?  Natural gas prices are spiking, factories are idling in Germany, protests in France, well, there are always protests in France.

Will this force negotiations with Russia over Ukraine?  Absolutely possible.  “Hey, Vlad, how about we ease sanctions if you pump more to us and we’ll rough up the Ukrainian midget?”

China’s in the same boat.  70% of their oil imports are from the Gulf, but are now rerouting around Africa at huge cost.

Where does this end?

Short term: pain.

Recessions in Europe, a slowdown in Asia, inflation here at home.

Long term: resets, and the world that we live in now becomes a dream.

I once had a dream I married an invisible woman.  Not sure what I saw in her.  Our kids were nothing to look at, either.

More drilling everywhere feasible, and maybe a rethink on global dependencies and who uses what currency.  But don’t count on smooth sailing.  Shocks like this expose fragilities, and in the Fourth Turning crisis, they’ll accelerate change.

Cheap energy’s over for now.

This oil shock isn’t just economic:  it’s existential.

Things flow smoothly.  Until they don’t.

Just ask Marvin.

The Fourth Turning: Things Stay The Same Until They Don’t, or, Markets, Money Printing, and Earthquake Faults

“I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.” – The Empire Strikes Back

I always felt disappointed when I lost a model rocket as a kid.  I guess I have thrust issues. (all memes as found)

Am I the only one who feels like the Fed© has been auditioning to play Darth Vader® in the Disney™ Star Wars:  Sith on Ice cast since about 2008?

We’re well into the Fourth Turning® now, and Strauss and Howe laid it out clear as day:  crisis, chaos, and a whole lot of “what the hell just happened?”  And boy, did they ever deliver.

  • War grinding on in Ukraine.
  • Fresh conflict kicking off with Iran – airstrikes, oil price jitters, the works.
  • Tariffs flying like confetti at a parade nobody wanted.
  • February hits and we lose 92,000 jobs just like that.

Yet somehow the stock market just, well, keeps going.  The Dow® is still near all-time highs, but it’s less than 50,000 so I guess it’s okay to ask Pam Bondi questions about Epstein now.  The NASDAQ© is shrugging off bad news like it’s just another Wednesday.  Prices are steady.  It’s almost impressive.

Almost.

Here’s the thing that keeps me up at night: this steadiness isn’t natural.  I think it’s juiced. Freshly printed money, courtesy of the Federal Reserve® and its never-ending balance sheet expansion.  Tectonic shifts are happening everywhere:  geopolitics, energy, labor.

Pa Wilder always told me to not spend too much on headphones.  That’s sound advice.

Wall Street acts like it’s business as usual.  That’s not resilience.  That’s a managed decline wearing a happy face.

Think about it.  The real economy?  People are cutting back.  Groceries are heavier on the wallet, so families skip the steak and finance Encharitos© for six months from Taco Bell®.  Credit card balances are climbing while actual stuff bought is shrinking.  The money printing isn’t creating wealth it’s masking the fact that the purchasing power is evaporating for regular people on the things they need to buy all the time.

But cracks are showing elsewhere.

BlackRock™.  You know, the biggest asset manager on the planet.  Just recently they slammed the door on their own shareholders trying to pull money out of a $26 billion private credit fund.  Redemption requests hit 9.3%, so they capped it and only let a fraction of that cash out.

“Sorry, billionaires, no soup for you this quarter.  Live like a wagie and crowdfund that Nachos Bellgrande©.”

Things are so tight that the Vatican is allowing tithes to be paid via PrayPal®.

This isn’t some glitch.  It’s happened before with other funds, and it’s spreading.  When the biggest players start gating withdrawals, it’s not because everything’s fine and dandy.  It’s because the underlying assets are illiquid and selling them fast would reveal prices that don’t match the fairy-tale valuations on the books.

Translation: the music’s still playing, but the chairs are getting scarce.  Where does this end?

Well, first off, it doesn’t end. Not really. Not in the neat, tidy way the TV experts promise.  Markets and prices, and whole economies work a lot like faults deep in the Earth’s crust.  Stress builds up slowly for years, sometimes decades, with hardly any movement you can see on the surface.  The tectonic plates stay locked together.

Everything looks calm and stable.  Then one day the pressure becomes too great and it all snaps like a 1980s postal worker, an 8.3 on the Richter scale.  The ground rips open and the entire landscape shifts twenty feet in seconds while people are shaking like a stripper in a vat of melting ice cream just trying not to fall down.  I guess that was an oddly specific metaphor wrapped in another metaphor.

Anyway.

Sam told the orphans they should play Grand Theft Auto® so they can be wanted.

When the shaking finally stops, things don’t go back to where they were.  The new normal is permanently different.  And when we’re talking asset prices in our funny money dollars, that shift is almost always higher than before.  Markets do the exact same dance.

Silver prices?  Steady as the rocks they were mined out of for years at a time.  Stress builds quietly.  Then inflation, crisis, or panic hits and the price explodes upward and the new resting level is higher than before.

Same story in 2008-2011: $9 to $49, overshot, pulled back, never returned to the old lows.

Gold does the same dance.  Fixed at $35 an ounce until Nixon slammed the gold window shut in 1971.  Then the printing started and it flew to $800, crashed to $300, but the next plateau was higher.

2000s bull run led to $1,900 gold, then a pullback, then new records above $3,000 and climbing. Each release of pressure overshoots, then settles higher when measured in our funny money.

Silver and gold and assets are telling us the story.

The money printers are holding the fault lines, sort of.  The pressure underneath is still growing every day as silver and gold and A.I. bubble.  Meanwhile, debt, demographics, global realignment, and the whole Fourth Turning stew.

An oracle once told me I would hit my leg at school.  She was right.  It was my desk to knee.

If I were giving advice to a young person starting out today, here’s at least part of what I’d say:

  • Buy stuff that’s real. Physical silver and gold, every single year, with at least part of whatever you save. Doesn’t have to be a ton. An ounce of gold here, a few ounces of silver there. Stack it. Hold it. Treat it like insurance, not a get-rich-quick scheme.
  • Land if you can swing it and cover the taxes and upkeep dirt doesn’t print more of itself and if it blows up at least you own a hole in the ground.
  • Stocks? Sure, invest in them too, as long as there’s still a stock market that isn’t just a government-sponsored casino.
  • Diversify, but never forget: paper assets only work while the system that backs the paper holds together.
  • The real key? Build skills.  Learn to produce something useful.  Grow food.  Fix things.  Trade with neighbors.  Get out of debt that isn’t productive.
  • Avoid crowds. Get out of cities if you’re still there:  a year too soon beats thirty seconds too late.

Because here’s the truth nobody on CNBC® wants to say out loud:  the managed decline might buy time, but it doesn’t buy forever.  The money printing is papering over cracks that are getting wider.  When the next quake comes, and it will, gold and silver won’t just hold value.  They’ll ratchet higher again, overshooting on the way up, then settling at a new, higher plateau.  It’s default, but just enough to bleed you a little.

It’s the same pattern every cycle.  History’s a harsh teacher, and she doesn’t offer extra credit.

The Fourth Turning isn’t here to be fair. It’s here to reset.  The people who see the pattern coming, who stack real assets quietly every year, who prepare instead of panic are the ones who come out the other side with options.

There’s no way that this can go bad, right?

The rest? They’ll be financing their next Taco Bell® run on a maxed-out card while wondering why the market “suddenly” stopped cooperating.

Things stay the same, until they don’t.

Stack accordingly. And pray the deal doesn’t get altered any further.

Disclaimer:  I write funny things, and you should know that by now so this isn’t investment advice.  I do have positions in silver and gold, because I’m not completely allergic to reality.  Do your own homework. Talk to a professional who isn’t trying to sell you the next hot ETF® or his children.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: A Chilly February

“Wayne coming back is change. Change is either good or bad. l vote bad.” – The Dark Knight

Is your refrigerator running?  If so, I might vote for it.

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

Volume VII, Issue 10

Most memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.  I have maintained the Clock O’Doom at 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 – Gerrymandering Risks – Violence and Censorship Update – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index  – But Who Will We Be? – 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 840 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Gerrymandering Risks

I’ve been concerned for some time that Trump’s attempt to redo the gerrymandering of the states with Republican control will end up not working out the way he thinks they will.  Right now, there are a total of 218 Republicans in the House of Representatives, the minimum number required for a majority of a full House.  There are a few vacancies.

Trump’s strategy has been to drive the strongly Republican-controlled states to gerrymander so that more Republican representatives would be elected.  The difficulty with this is that there is an optimum number so that the seats are safe for the party drawing the districts, yet impossible to lose.  The impact has been the change in districting so, if things work well for the Republicans they would pick up between 7 to 9 additional seats.  The Democrats weren’t idle, changes they initiated will likely end up driving 5 or 6 states their way.  That is, however, dependent upon the Republicans maintaining their current level of support.

In 2018, Republicans lost 26 House seats in Trump’s first term.  Even with gerrymandering, a similar performance would lead to Republicans losing 23 House seats.  However, with the remaining Republican vote spread thinner in states like Texas, what’s the likelihood that 30, 40, or even 50 seats are lost?

That’s not enough to override presidential vetoes, but it is enough to pass a never-ending stream of impeachments against every Republican appointee.  Would they be convicted in the Senate?

No.  But it would create a series of political events that would further polarize the public, and pull us closer to Civil War, and Trump’s ability to impact the laws of the nation will be crippled.

Violence and Censorship Update

More censorship that violence this month, as usual (until it’s not).  Let’s start with the United States:

According to GloboLeftists, being okay with being white is evidence of hate:

And, apparently GloboLeftists are unfamiliar with hydrology, and always look like this crazy-eyed cat lady:

Who is unfamiliar with maps:

But there is still far too much censorship among a certain set of files.  Why?

Before we get to Europe, let’s look at how the Europeans are being used to try to shut down our ability to say what we want:

And certain speech is especially hated, even in Islamic France:

And Germans have utterly lost the plot:

Although this is parody:

This isn’t.  Police yourself, citizen, because even legal speech can be illegal.

Misery Index

The new Trump administration is shown in red.  Results continue to be much better than Biden’s misery numbers.

But nobody is buying houses, and the war with Iran won’t help that, but deflationary housing would be good for the kids.

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 sharply this month, and, although they aren’t George Floyd-levels, you can see that from here.  And there’s a lot of frustration with illegals who are killing us:

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it went up slightly this month.  I anticipate it going up again in March, especially since half of the population hates Americans and 40% of the other half don’t want a war with Iran.

Economic:

The economy up just a smidge this month, but I think the bubble has some pretty grey hair and some other headwinds are on the horizon.

Illegal Aliens:

Still the lowest level since the Weather Report started.

But Who Will We Be?

Imagine a country that no one wants to fight for, because no one thinks of it as anything but a short-term economic investment?

As an American, I can trace my ancestry through about three main nations.  Even the word nation is based on the Latin word “natio”, meaning birth.  My ancestors have been here for a minimum on three generations, and many fought back in the Revolutionary War.  When I was born, I was born into a nation.  Most of Americans were in the same basket, we had no fealty nor acceptance in any other place in the world.  We were here and this was our land.

Now, in the West, it has become the norm to look down on the natives, and turn the United States from a nation into a country.  An example I’ve mentioned many times are Indians.  Indians have nothing in common with heritage Americans.  Nothing, except, perhaps that they like oxygen, too.

Can you imagine a presidential candidate creating a monument to a foreign leaders for worship?  Okay, I should ask that after the Iran war.  Although I think the picture below is probably A.I., you could certainly see someone like Vivek doing something like this, because they are nothing like us.

Judges with dual citizenship.  FEDERAL JUDGES with dual citizenship and Star Wars™ names ruling on citizenship.  These people have only the barest understanding of America, but they create rulings that impact a country they barely understand.

Europe is ahead of us on this track.  Germans have been taught since 1945 to hate Germany.  Is it any wonder that Germans won’t fight for their once proud nation, especially since in 2050 or so it will be Turkish?

And England, our mother country has ceased to have Englishmen that are willing to fight and die for it.  Why?

An increasingly fragmented country is one that will lead towards Balkanization and terror.  The GloboLeft do not understand this, but it is still the case that mass deportation is the most moderate choice that we can hope for.

LINKS

The links are again done by Ricky this month.  Thanks, Ricky!

BAD GUYS
https://x.com/kmbc/status/2022104782240940391
https://x.com/Dapper_Det/status/2023206053878321607
https://x.com/JeremyHarrisTV/status/2023254443748397064
https://x.com/iAnonPatriot/status/2019206205605077017

GOOD GUYS
https://www.police1.com/investigations/r-i-pd-credits-good-samaritan-with-stopping-shooter-who-killed-2-at-youth-hockey-game
https://www.wpri.com/news/local-news/se-mass/just-trying-to-help-good-samaritan-seriously-hurt-trying-to-assist-driver-in-freetown/
https://www.therepublic.com/2026/03/07/person-reported-missing-after-airboat-capsizes-in-floodwaters-near-cortland/

ONE GUY
https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/flashing-a-gun-self-defense-or-brandishing/

BODY COUNT
https://www.lifenews.com/2026/02/20/canada-is-killing-people-in-assisted-suicide-the-same-day-they-request-it/
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/chance-of-being-born-on-continen.jpg?itok=FKOx1vzK
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Where_Americans_Having_Most_Babi.jpg?itok=bYt31T_L
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Share-of-Babies-Born-Outside-of.jpg?itok=6CY3ehVw
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2026-02-15_12-13-18.png?itok=2SeS4jAZ
https://pjmedia.com/scott-pinsker/2026/02/13/the-least-laid-generation-in-history-gen-z-is-ghosting-sex-and-the-implications-are-huge-n4949466

VOTE COUNT
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/panic-ensues-after-trump-orders-cia-give-2020-election-intel-stop-steal-lawyer
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/visualizing-changing-political-affiliation-generation-us

CIVIL WAR (OURS)
https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-states-where-support-for-seceding-from-us-is-rising-11515967
https://nataliegwinters.substack.com/p/exc-usaid-funded-revolution-consultants
https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/trump-ice-immigration-protests-minneapolis/
https://www.washingtontimes.com/cartoons/state-states/civil-war-in-america/
https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/us-politics/the-second-american-civil-war-is-already-here/
https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/386290/time-to-take-civil-war-seriously/
https://www.newamericanjournal.net/2026/02/you-cant-call-it-a-civil-war-if-one-side-refuses-to-fight/
https://baptistnews.com/article/americas-unfinished-civil-war/

CIVIL WAR (THEIRS)
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-fix-is-in-to-defeat-alberta-independence/
https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/civil-war-comes-to-the-west-part-ii-strategic-realities/

Wilder Weekly News, War Edition

“Because I am good at three things:  fighting, screwing and reading the news.  Now, I’ve already done one of those today.  So, what’s the other one gonna be?” – Anchorman:  The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Breaking news:  huge accident at the day care while playing peek-a-boo.  All were rushed to ICU. (all memes, clips as-found)

Even though it took longer than one of my usual posts, I thought I’d do another weekly news recap like I did last week.  The last one was fun.  This won’t be an all the time thing, but I’m going to continue it from time to time on Fridays.

Top Story

It’s war!  Or not.  No one can seem to figure out if it’s war.  Regardless, many Americans have mixed feelings, since approximately 80% of Americans don’t want war with Iran.  After really looking at the map, I can see the point of the 20% who want to bomb Iran into oblivion, send all of its citizens home, and cut it off from the Internet and international commerce.

Say what you want, I think this war has legs.  And yes, I know that a woman wasn’t in command, because if Trump asked a female commander where to bomb Iran for the greatest strategic impact, she would have said, “I don’t know, you choose.”

China has jumped out to positively indicate that in some cases that if the situation is right that they totally, completely support Iran in a moral sense if it’s okay with everyone else.

China had previously provided support to Iran, giving them a cunningly designed set of targets designed to look exactly like air defense missiles.

It turns out that Iran bought them at a discount, so at least they were a bargain.

Best Korea is waiting on the bench, still trying to get the coach’s eye so they can be sent in.

A United States Navy submarine put an Iranian frigate to the bottom of the ocean.  The Pentagon released the footage (below) and described the torpedo trajectory as one of the best attacks from ever, describing it as sub-optimal.  Iranians cried foul, since they felt it was unfair that the United States would sink one of their harmless warships that’s filled with guns and missiles.

Wall Street pundit Jim Cramer has invoked the Cramer effect and notes that this will be a short war.

Moving away from war, the United States shocked Canada by having learned how to play hockey for the first time since the Soviets were in charge, and won the gold medal.  Canadians were furious, and very upset at the loss and if we could speak Hindi we might be able to understand their pain.

India has plans to introduce an additional 60 million Indians to Canada, but the good news is that will only mean they need 17 apartments and two more toilets.

Thankfully, the GloboLeftElite and the ChamberCommerceElite have decided that everyone is a natural American and their policy was leaked on /pol/.

Great Britain has already adopted a variant of this policy.

And from the “How did The X-Files become a training video?” desk, we find that The X-Files was again a training video:

The moderation group of Black People Twitter, a Reddit© subreddit, got together for a meetup, showing that black culture has produced a great group of keyboard warriors!

And Gavin Newsom continued his outreach to black people, meeting a group of them for some blunts and purple drank prior to going out to shoot up a hookah bar.  From Gavin, “I just can’t wait to go shoot up some Juneteenth parties!”

In another shameful display of trans-hatred, a magazine posted the picture on the left instead of the actual picture of the stunning and brave trans-woman who was forced to swim with men instead of actual women.

And, Sydney Sweeney certainly was outclassed by a woman, Grugdra the Hungry, made entirely of adipose and Play-Doh® who showed Ms. Sweeney what a real woman was like.  You sure showed her, Grugdra!

In political news, EyePatch McCain was defeated in his primary race by someone who had not seen coming.

In other news, a woman voting for the Leopards Eating Faces Party was surprised when, in fact, a leopard ate her face.

Finally, a solution for one of the most vexing questions related to medically assisted suicide has been solved.  Who should decide if a person can end their life?  A.I.  Specifically, Tay®.

How To Break A Society, Part II: Destroy The Family

“You can do anything, but never go against the family.” – The Godfather

Women are like the IRS:  they won’t tell you what they want until you make a mistake. (memes as-found)

Picture this:  A young guy in finishes high school, gets a factory job paying enough for a house, a car, and a stay-at-home wife.  They pop out 2.5 kids (the .5 is for Kevin, who isn’t too bright).  They go to church on Sunday, and the kids argue about whose turn it is to mow the lawn.

There is no prenup, no Tinder® swipes, no OnlyFans™ side hustle and no Facebook™ telling the wife that every other woman has it better.  Just stability.  Boring?

No.  Enriching.  But this isn’t 2026, it’s the standard from 1956 before the rot set in.

Today:  That same guy’s grandkid is 28, drowning in student debt for that degree she got in degree in the Ethnography of Colonialism and its impact on Basket Weaving techniques of Amazonian tribes.  She’s living in a pod with five roommates, and swiping right on profiles of 6’2”, six figure Chads, trading her youth to chase a fleeting thrill.

Are barbarians people who cut hair in a library?

Marriage?  Ha!  She’s living her “best life” on a carousel of dates with men that would never marry her, but sure would give her horizontal attention for an evening.

Kids?  Such a constraint!

The idea is simple:  everything is made of atoms, and those atoms are the smallest piece that makes up whatever it is we’re looking at.  At the core of any society is an atom, too.

This isn’t the proton-neutron-electron kind.  No, this is the atom of society, the family, a Dad, a Mom, and kids.  Throughout all of recorded history, societies that crank out the next generation survive.  The ones that don’t?  They end up as footnotes in dusty history books.

The most stable setup?  Dad in charge, Mom raising the rugrats, everyone pulling in the same direction.  Young men get wives, which calms their inner caveman urges.  Kids give them purpose beyond leveling up in Call of Duty®.

A society of married dads with skin in the game?  They build.  They invest.  They don’t riot over pronouns.  This setup is so rock-solid it’s baked into every enduring culture from Rome to the Amish.  It’s also morally encoded.  It’s True, Beautiful, and Good. The Bible talks about this from the earliest through the latest books, with not a single mention of gay marriage being stunning and brave.

I told a female cop she was stunning to get out of a ticket.  Shouldn’t have added, “and that’s not even the booze talking.”

But since the late 1800s, there’s been a full-court press to dismantle the family.

Why?  Because stable families are hard to control.  Families don’t need government handouts or therapy apps because they self-regulate.

Enter the wrecking crew.

First?

Women voting.  It sounds innocent and there’s a broad consensus in the United States that it’s a good thing.

“Equality!” the women yelled.  But it fails for a simple reason.  It’s based upon the concept that society’s basic unit isn’t the family, instead it’s the individual.  Individuals don’t reproduce; families do.  An island of just women in a few decades will produce an island where no one lives at all, and when the last two women die it’s nearly certain they wouldn’t have talked to each other in years.

I’ve said it before:  if I was in charge, I’d restrict voting to folks with stake in the future.  How about married men who are net taxpayers, wed to women under 35.  This would produce serious elections with no pandering to cat ladies or trust-fund socialists.  You could make the argument that married women vote rationally because, “Hey, low taxes mean more for the kids.”  But unmarried women?  They lean heavily toward anti-family voting, like funding endless welfare that rewards single moms over intact homes, endless immigration because refugees are like the children they didn’t have that they didn’t care for.

And they really get mad when you go to the library and put all the women’s rights books in the fiction section.

Continuing our trip back in history, hand-in-hand with suffrage came the push for contraception.  The big push for legalization kicked off around 1914, right alongside the suffragettes.

Perhaps the reason that these old battle axes were in favor of contraception was because if sex meant that a man had the chance of being chained to one of them, they’d never get laid.  Look at old photos of those gals, they were coyotes-ugly in corsets.

Regardless, the goal was decoupling sex from consequences.  Fun?  Sure.  But families?  Optional now.  The Four Horsemen of the Family-pocalypse were galloping at around this time.

They consisted of: Women’s voting, spiritualism (because nothing says “stable society” like séances with your dead aunt), contraception, and free love.

All of these are profoundly anti-family.

The roots for these movements are as far away from True, Beautiful, and Good as you can get:  they were ugly, communist, and family-hating.  A generation after the 19th Amendment, Planned Parenthood® rebranded.  Their pitch? Legal abortion and, later, the Pill.  No kids?  No family.  Sex is all about fun.

People who casually use hyperbole are the worst.

Then Roe v. Wade in 1973 led to abortion on demand.  “My body, my choice,” except the body inside isn’t yours, but hey, logic is optional in revolutions.  The result?  Millions of potential families and children vaporized before they started.

Add in the other sacrament of Evil:  no-fault divorce.  Marriage used to mean something and was difficult to get out of.  Now? “Irreconcilable differences” means that divorces are on the menu.  In marriages with college-educated women, over 90% are initiated by the woman.

Why?  “I’m unhaaaaappy.  Pay me.”

Disposable vows means meaningless commitment. Families shatter like dropped PEZ® dispensers.

And the cherry on top?  Gay marriage.  French historian Emmanuel Todd (LINK) called this the final shark-jump for Western society.  It redefines marriage from a “procreation unit” to a “feel-good contract.”

Society’s now officially anti-family.  Proof?  Heritage Americans’ birthrate dipped below replacement.  In 55 years, we went from a tight-knit nation of shared blood, faith, and language to a balkanized mess where the only glue is “we all breathe oxygen . . . mostly.”

Media’s been the propaganda arm on steroids for this anti-family movement. Hollywood has been anti-family at least since Archie Bunker first stepped on stage.  Now? Every script’s a checklist:

  • All bad guys:  White, straight heritage Americans.
  • Women:  Kick butt like Rambo, but in heels.  Physics? Who needs that?
  • Dads:  Bumbling idiots who can’t tie their shoes without Mom’s help.
  • Moms:  Boss queens running the show, because empowerment.
  • Kids:  Precocious sexualized objects wiser than adults.
  • Traditional values:  Mocked as uncool, if shown at all. Religion is shown only to show how evil it is.  Children of the Corn, anyone?

It’s like Hollywood hired the Antichrist as script consultant and he became a network executive. Peak America was built on strong families.

Now?  We’re force-fed “Modern Family®” as the new normal, where Dad is optional and kids are accessories.

None of this was accidental and every bit of it was engineered.  The GloboLeftElite saw stable families as roadblocks.  Families teach self-reliance, morality, and “no, you can’t have everything.”

My new hobby is going up to young women who are staring at their phones and asking if they’re my Tinder® date.

Government wants dependence:  “We’ll be your family, citizen. Just vote blue and hand over your paycheck.”  They splintered us with migration, welfare that punished marriage, schools that indoctrinate instead of educate, and a culture that celebrates “my truth” over “our future.”

The absurdity? We did this during our peak prosperity where we could have invested our wealth and energy to take us to the stars.

We were fat, happy, and gullible.

We were perfect marks for the con. “Break the old norms, women, they’re oppressive!”

Why do college-educated GloboLeftist women buy pit bulls?  A lot of them go after their masters.

Now we’ve got fatherless homes breeding crime waves, women wondering where the good men went, and a birthrate that screams extinction event.  A society without families is a house of cards in a hurricane.

Young men without purpose?  They don’t create since there’s no reason to.

Women without kids?  They adopt causes or cats.

Kids without dads?  Statistics waiting to happen.

The bill?  As I said before, it’s coming due, with interest.