Equity And Equality – Why Leftists Cheat At Elections

“Equal, but not even.” – Die Another Day

What did the Frenchman yell as he went down the slide?  “YES!”

On Wednesday after the election, I consciously decided to sleep in – I had taken a vacation day from work.  I slept in.  It was luxurious.  Like a Roman soldier, I really enjoy resting on my pila-case.  At a time that was later than I’ll admit to, I rolled over in bed and picked up my phone.

Substantial leads for Trump from the night before had evaporated.  For whatever reason, this reminded me of the story of the Fox and the Scorpion.

Fox and the Scorpion both wanted to cross a river.  Why?  Probably a decent discount on quality unpainted furniture on the other side.  Scorpion wants to ride on the back of Fox.  Fox, not being stupid, says, “Dude, you’re a scorpion, you’re going to sting and kill me!”

Scorpion, logically, responds, “C’mon, man!  Let me tell you what my dead son Beau would say.  You know the thing. But if I sting you while we’re crossing the river, I’ll die, too.”  Scorpion paused, ”Just like I died when I fought Corn Pop.”

Fox, remembering his mandatory training on systematic speciesism, agrees and apologizes for his microagression and his foxist privilege.  Fox says, “Hop on.”

Fox begins swimming through the river.  Halfway to the other side, Scorpion stings Fox.

Fox, through the haze of pain and spreading paralysis as Scorpion’s neurotoxin spreads through his system says, “Scorpion!  You’ve killed us both!”

Scorpion responds, “C’mon man!  You knew I was a scorpion when I got on your back.”

I pushed the fable out of my mind as I slowly scrolled through all the data.  I then turned off my phone.  I went into the front room and sat down to read for a while.  Pugsley and The Mrs. were off at school and work, respectively.  It has been as rare as late-night TV show hosts with a sense of humor since 2016 that I’ve had the opportunity to just sit in silence without any work or a blog deadline hanging over my head.  I decided to grab a burger and a beer.

How many vegans does it take to eat a Double Quarter Pounder® with cheese?  One, if no one is watching.

In Modern Mayberry, we have five fast-food restaurants.  The day was perfect in temperature, which means it was on the cold side for most people.  I got to the speaker and ordered.  I then drove home, grabbed a beer out of the fridge, and ate my burger.  I tried to remember what my doctor said.  I think it was “Don’t eat anything fatty.”

It was good – cheesy and greasy and just the right amount of pickles.  I then remembered what my doctor had really said, “Don’t eat anything, fatty.”

For me, Wednesday was about balance.  It’s easy enough to fall into the trap of getting so wound up about politics that you lose perspective.  Honestly, one of the nicest things about living in Alaska was that Lower 48 politics was thousands of miles away.  You could nearly ignore it.  I’ve found that turning off my phone works almost as well.

On Thursday, it was back to work, and back to writing.  Of course, I have thoughts about the election, and you can probably guess what many of them are.  But the big thing that comes to mind with the 2020 election is fraud. It’s easy enough to look for fraud, heck, when that psychic told me she’d take my check I knew she was a fraud.

These ballots are from Seattle, so they definitely got mac n’ cheese.

Honestly, if you look at nearly any election, you can find things that look like fraud if you look hard enough.  The exception, of course, is my election to LOCAL OFFICE, where I estimate I had 335.33% more votes than the nearest competitor.

Hmmm, that sounds suspicious.  33533 is the same backwards as forward.  And it’s all 3’s with one five.  Normal numbers never look that way . . . except . . .  I was running unopposed for a job that no one else seemed to want.

You can confirm your bias that I stole the election – that 335.33% just looks too perfect.

From an ideological perspective, stealing an election is the last thing I’d do.  What ideology says that?  The ideology of the Right

The ideology of the Right is very different than that of the Left.  The Right is focused on Equality.  The Left is focused on Equity.  It’s really the fight between Equality and Equity that best defines the split between thinking on the Right and thinking on the Left.

A Marine with a salt and pepper beard is likely a seasoned veteran.

Western Civilization has always been a civilization of Equality and the philosophy of the Right.  You are born.  If you make your peace with God?  You can go to Heaven.  It’s up to you.  No one will drag you across the line.  If you want to create a business?  Be a glorious hero?  Sure, class may have come into it, but there was always room for the barbarian to make it to king.

The Right is Equality.

Equality is a 100 yard (3450 meters) dash.  I line up on the same line with my opponent.  When the starter pistol goes off, we start running.  If I’m running against a moderately athletic high school-aged boy who doesn’t have tularemia, tuberculosis, typhus, and tetanus, he’s going to make it to the finish line first.  If it’s a fat kid?  Okay, I might dust him.

As long as he has typhus.

Equality is about having the same opportunities.  The opportunity, in this case, is the open track.  It’s the same for both of us.  The opportunity includes the starter pistol.  We’ll hear it at the same time.  Each of us have the same conditions.

I have had many of the same opportunities in my life as Elon Musk.  I’m thrilled that he’s doing so well.  We had an equal shot at the world, and he ended up with billions.  I’m good with that.  He ran the race very, very well.  His running allows us to win, and in the end, makes us all wealthier.

If Musk flew his Tesla® through a black hole, because of tidal gravity forces, he’d be Elon-gated.

Equality is obsessed with fairness.  One person, one vote.  In Modern Mayberry, I think that getting the local officials to bend the rules during voting would have a penalty worse than speaking loudly in the local library.

The rules matter, and we follow them.  When The Mrs. had to get her license when we moved to Modern Mayberry, you could see the gleam in the DMV clerk’s eye as she ticked off the things The Mrs. had to produce to get her license.

  • Birth certificate?
  • Proof of address?
  • Current electrocardiogram?
  • Head of John the Baptist?
  • Marriage certificate?

Yup.  She was denied because she couldn’t prove that I’d married her.  Ha!  You can bet that The Mrs. wasn’t very happy when I drove her home singing, “Guess you are my property, doo-dah, doo-dah; my wife’s my chattel property all the doo-dah day.”  Of course, as I said this I had a brand-new Upper-Lower-Midwestia license in my wallet.

The Mrs. was not amused.

But the DMV clerk was 100% being fair.  The rules are the rules, no matter how stupid they might be.  The rules are the rules, no matter who you are.  And DMV clerks should follow them.

To the letter.

That’s Equality.  No matter who you are, when you walk into the DMV office, you’re all equally dirt in their eyes.  I think the DMV clerk even shed a tear when I had every single document she requested.  Getting through on the first time was like cheating to her.

Never get behind the Devil at the DMV if you need to do paperwork – the Devil can take many forms.

Believing in Equality is why people on the Right don’t steal votes.  They want to see the race run fairly.  If you don’t have the right paperwork?

No license for you.  I will say that when I got my license, the DMV clerk tried to get me to be an organ donor.  That was a girl after my own heart.

The DMV, at least here, is Equal.  Equity is different.

Equity is the belief that fairness isn’t measured on the starting conditions but on the outcome.  If a 100 yard (.31 centimeter) race was run on Equity measures, I would only have to run, say, 50 yards if I was running against someone twice as fast as me.  The goal of Equity isn’t to see who is fastest, it’s to structure the race so that people finish the way you want them to finish.

Given that Leftists are focused on Equity, or the outcome of the race, does it make sense that they’d try to steal an election?

Certainly.

Leftist focus only on the outcomes.  If a process like the 100 yard (34 milliKelvins) dash produces results where someone is faster, it’s the process that’s wrong.  If the process consistently produces a race where the fastest person wins?

To a Leftist, that’s unfair.

Not mine.  Second time I’ve used this recently.  The main problem is that the Equity in Reality panel is missing the pile of skulls that Leftism always, inevitably produces.  And the Easter Bunny doesn’t exist, either.

Equity, in the mind of the Leftist, isn’t in the casting of ballots.  Equity is in the counting of them.  Your favored candidate is losing?  What’s a few hundred thousand extra ballots?  They can punch them with a hammer or a sickle.

Why do Leftists cheat?

C’mon man, it’s because they’re Leftists.  What did you expect?

Election Day 2020: Liveblogging Post

“No thank you, Delmar. A third of a gopher would only arouse my appetite without beddin’ ‘er back down.” – O Brother, Where Art Thou?

How many Russians does it take for Hillary Clinton to lose an election?  None.

Front Matter:  I will start liveblogging (in the comments of this post) the election results when they come in.  I expect this will be about 8pm Eastern Standard Time.  I’ll stop when the mood strikes me – there isn’t a set end time.  I will say this – Standard Time Rules, and I really, really hate Daylight Savings Time.

2020 marks the most momentous election of our lifetimes.  Why?

Trump 2020?

No.

Wilder 2020.  Yes, I am an official candidate.  I can explain.

I’m a skilled professional.

During the state primary season in Modern Mayberry, in Upper-Lower Midwestia, I got a text message from The Boy.

“I put you in as a write-in candidate for NAMELESS OFFICE.”

Immediately I texted The Mrs.  “Hey, honey, please vote for me for NAMELESS OFFICE.”  She didn’t respond.  That’s normal.

I made my own way to the polls, and proudly wrote “John Wilder” in for NAMELESS OFFICE.  It turns out that The Mrs. did, too.

I had three votes.

What does one do with three votes in an insurgent write-in candidacy for NAMELESS OFFICE?  You call the County Clerk the day after to see if you won.

I did that.

“A write in?  Umm, call us next week, sweetie.”

I forgot to call them back.  But then a few weeks later when The Boy was down from State College, he got the mail one Saturday, and brought it into the living room.

I sent a guitar back to the factory once.  I marked it “return to Fender®.” 

“Hey, Pop, it’s a letter from the County.  Are you still burning tires and diesel fuel in the backyard?”  The Boy handed me a big letter – one that might have held the x-ray of bigfoot’s prostate exam.

I opened it.  Nope – not a prostate exam.  It was an official certificate saying that I was an official candidate for election in the 2020 election.  How many of those do you have?

I am running unopposed in the general election.  Since I was running unopposed, I decided on a sneaky campaign:  not let anyone know I was running.  The idea I had was simple – if anyone knew I was running, they would have time to oppose me.  Ha!  I’m too sneaky for that.

But now it’s too late.  There will be one name to vote for:  mine.  I think my chances are good, since I’m sure I’ll get more than the three votes that propelled me on this political odyssey.  I’m hoping for at least a solid dozen votes.

If your refrigerator is running?  I know some people in New Mexico that would vote for it.

You may ask, what does the elected office require me to do?  I won’t give you most of the specifics.  But I did check online and researched the state statutes that describe what I’m being elected to do.  In one, very old book (1883?) I found that I was responsible for the control of underground burrowing rodents.  In none of the modern laws does it mention that I’m responsible for that, but, hey:

The law is the law.

I think I’ll make that the signature of my administration.  I’ll become John Wilder, licensed to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. A man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit. 

Ever.

If A is for Apple, and B is for Banana, what is C for?  Explosives.

I’m pretty sure that this will entitle me to a badge and unlimited access to fully automatic weapons, rocket propelled grenades, and plastic explosives.  Okay, maybe not.  But I’m also sure that there are absolutely zero laws in my state that prohibit me from making my own badge.  I think I might design my badge to be a big “W” with lightning bolts hitting an underground rodent.

Maybe it will all be over the top of a nuclear mushroom cloud?

Does my badge allow me to do anything special, like turn into a werewolf and roam the countryside naked in the cool autumn nights looking  for a safe spaceship flight.  Well, no.  But thankfully it doesn’t prohibit that, either.

Does my badge allow me to requisition nuclear weapons from the Federal government to control subterranean rodents?  Well, no.   But it does make the requisition request for fully automatic weapons, an old M-60 Patton tank, three F-16 fighters and 53,000 pounds of Compound C seem reasonable.

I mean, how else would you deal with gophers?  You wouldn’t.  That’s why you need a cold-blooded rodent killer like me.   Badgers?  You don’t need no stinking badgers!

My son said he got awarded the Leslie Neilson badge at school.  I asked him, “What’s that?”  He said it’s a big building filled with kids.

Here’s my campaign slogan:

“Wilder 2020, because you want John Wilder to have access to a badge and enough weapons to overthrow Brazil, even though he only got three primary votes.”

See you in the comments tonight!

The Archbishop, Trump, And The Coming Great Reset

“Jahr null. Year zero. An experiment. A reset. A new America.” – The Man in the High Castle

I hear that Noah kept his bees in the Ark hives.

I first became aware of “The Great Reset” last week.  There are quite a few YouTube® videos about it, but one of the more unusual mentions was in a letter to President Trump from a retired Catholic clergyman.  This particular clergyman is Archbishop Carlo Viganò.  I don’t know what the difference is between an Archbishop and a Bishop, but I suspect it has to do with a better quality of footwear.

Anyway, Archbishop Viganò wrote the following in the letter:

A global plan called the Great Reset is underway. Its architect is a global élite that wants to subdue all of humanity, imposing coercive measures with which to drastically limit individual freedoms and those of entire populations. In several nations this plan has already been approved and financed; in others it is still in an early stage. Behind the world leaders who are the accomplices and executors of this infernal project, there are unscrupulous characters who finance the World Economic Forum and Event 201, promoting their agenda.

The purpose of the Great Reset is the imposition of a health dictatorship aiming at the imposition of liberticidal measures, hidden behind tempting promises of ensuring a universal income and cancelling individual debt. The price of these concessions from the International Monetary Fund will be the renunciation of private property and adherence to a program of vaccination against Covid-19 and Covid-21 promoted by Bill Gates with the collaboration of the main pharmaceutical groups. Beyond the enormous economic interests that motivate the promoters of the Great Reset, the imposition of the vaccination will be accompanied by the requirement of a health passport and a digital ID, with the consequent contact tracing of the population of the entire world. Those who do not accept these measures will be confined in detention camps or placed under house arrest, and all their assets will be confiscated.

You can read the whole letter here (LINK).

Okay, the story the Archbishop was sharing seemed like an Infowars® segment, but with less tinfoil.  What was up?

I hear that Alex Jones’ wife left him because she said he was paranoid.  Alex was okay with that – he said he’d rather live alone than live with a government clone.

Well, it is stuff that’s directly out of an Infowars™ segment:  as I dug into the Archbishop’s clues, it was exactly correct.  The World Economic Forum©, which runs that annual Davos conference in Switzerland where 3,000 of the elite of the business world, academia, Hollywood, and the press get together to discuss how awesome they are for sacrificing themselves by flying their private  jets to visit a Swiss resort.

Alex Jones regularly says they’re up to no good when they meet at Davos.  Not everything is a conspiracy:  I’m certain that Alcoa® and Planters™ will never be allowed to merge, since everyone is afraid of the AlumaNutty.

I will say this about Switzerland – their flag is a big plus.

I know the Leftists complain about the 1%, but this is the 0.00004%.  The amazing thing?  The 0.00004% agree nearly entirely with Antifa’s® agenda.  Here’s what the Great Reset entails, as showcased in articles on the World Economic Forum©’s own website (LINK):

  • “We must build entirely new foundations for our economic and social systems.” The Davos folks describing freedom:  “Be free.  No!  No, not like that.”
  • “In fact, one silver lining of the pandemic is that it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyles.” I’d like to point out that some things didn’t change at all:  WNBA games have always been empty.
  • “. . . will require stronger and more effective governments . . . .” I’m against both of those things.  If we have strong government, I really hope it’s Three Stooges®-level incompetent.
  • “ . . . governments should implement long-overdue reforms that promote more equitable outcomes.” Remember – equality is we all have the same chance.  Equitable means we all get the same outcome.  Except, of course, for the 0.00004%.

Not mine.  Why doesn’t everyone just buy a ticket?

There are three main points that the World Economic Forum© is currently selling as the Great Reset:

  • International coordination on almost everything is the first component. If you thought we had too much globalization already?  Get ready for armies of international bureaucrats to write legislation and regulation that no one is accountable for.
  • “The second component of a Great Reset agenda would ensure that investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability.” Who shares these goals?  Well, at least the 0.00004% do, and they know best, right?  Especially when they spend your money.
  • Finally, they want to “harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to support the public good, especially by addressing health and social challenges.” The Fourth Industrial Revolution is Davos-speak for the post-Internet acceleration in information technology and the way that it interacts with the physical world.

But the World Economic Forum dives deeper.  One of the more chilling aspects is that they no longer want individuals to own, well, anything.  You can read the article here (LINK), right off of the World Economic Forum’s© website.  I did a little digging, and found the author was a member of Danish parliament, but prior to that?  She had spent 8 years getting a Masters in theology, became a part-time theology teacher, and then was in parliament.  Sound like a blonde version of AOC?

I you can’t tell socialists jokes – not everyone will get it.  Photo by Johannes Jansson/norden.org, CC BY 2.5 dk

Everything that Archbishop Viganò suggests is an aim of the Great Reset is plainly on the World Economic Forum© website, with the exception for the Archbishop’s claim that that people would be put into camps if they didn’t comply by being vaccinated and chipped.  That, in my mind, makes sense.  It’s not normally something that a country advertises, “Hey come for the free stuff, stay for the concentration camps.”  Or, “Virginia, it’s for Lovers of Barbed Wire.”

I hear the socialist student got top Marx in school.

My review of the Great Reset is simple:

It’s the same hokum that the Left has been selling since before the French Revolution.  The Left promises they will make people into new men and they will share the prosperity with everyone.  But those in control will then ask the question – how many people do we need, really?  The answer is a simple one, and it’s always the same:  fewer than we have now.

In reality, the 0.00004% never even start to share.  The 0.00004% will make life easy and free.  All you have to give up?  All of your freedom.  Hmm, I can get the Devil to grant my wish in exchange for my soul, and I don’t even have to go down to the Crossroads?

Which is why an Archbishop might write a letter in the first place . . . .

Never Let Them Demoralize You, Complete With Gratuitous Economic Bikini Graph

“Maybe we got ’em demoralized.” – Aliens

I was reminded that, even though I bragged I was the Inventor of the Bikini Graph®, I had produced no bikini graph in a recent post.  My apologies.  Here is the most recent GDP of the United States.  With bikini.  How can you be sad after seeing these results???

I was on the football team at my high school.  I know the football teams on television are all above average, but they had to play someone.  And we were the ones they got to play so they could be above average.

Going from memory, I’m certain we never had a winning season in high school.  My senior year, we won a single varsity game, and that was by a margin of two points – we won 8-6.  A record of 1-8 might sound like it only took nine weeks to make, but it seems a lot longer while you’re making it.

One particular game we went into the locker room at halftime, down by some amazing deficit that rhymes with 38-6.  It was winter.  The rain that was coming down on the field was freezing creating a wet yet frozen field.  It was a miserable day, but still better than watching a Disney® movie made in the last 20 years.

Our head coach then said to the team, “Listen, guys, go on out there and play like it’s zero-zero.”

I don’t know if you’ve ever gone into a locker room, realizing you were going to have to go back out onto the field and spend the next hour of your life going toe-to-toe against another team that was, statistically speaking, certain to win.  It’s as unpleasant as spending time in an elevator with Bill Clinton and his old-man onion breath.

Bill Clinton thought that the only thing that could make him cry was an onion.  Then Hillary started throwing ashtrays at him.

Now, I may not be a math major, but our team was down by 32 points.  Playing like we were zero-zero was like assuming that we were not already getting hammered like Hunter Biden on a Tuesday morning.  To me, this didn’t make sense, I even thought it was borderline delusional.  It wasn’t zero-zero.  It was at least 32 points below zero-zero.

As I got older, I began to figure it out.  What the coaches were trying to help us overcome was simple.  Demoralization.  We weren’t winning.  We weren’t going to win, since our quarterback couldn’t throw farther than about forty feet, and couldn’t count higher than 12 without taking off his shoes.  Of course, having six fingers on each hand did improve his grip, so he rarely fumbled . . .

But there is a choice in life.  You can live, knowing that you are going to fail, and acting like you’re going to fail.  Or you can live, and just do your best in every moment, knowing that you’ve left it all out there, like a monkey in a minefield, when everything goes ba-BOON.

It’s a fact:  humans eat more bananas than monkeys.  Personally?  I find that monkeys are more filling.

Living life as a failure is demoralization.

But what is demoralization?  Demoralization is depriving people of spirit, of morale, of courage.

I don’t know about you, but I was proud to go back on the field when we were losing.  Not proud that we were losing.  But proud that we had the guts to go back out there, again and again, and give it everything we had on each play.

I’m not telling any secrets when I say that it’s the goal of some groups to demoralize the people of the United States.  The news in 2020 has been a constant drumbeat to demoralize anyone who would oppose the Leftist, globalist agenda.

If you were to take them at face value, there’s no way that Americans could ever be sovereign in their own nation again.  And certainly, we should live in fear of disease for the rest of our lives and put everything on hold because of it.  Masks?  Why not make them mandatory forever.  To me?  That sounds like giving up.  And also, Wal-Mart® may not enforce the mask policy, but they still get pretty upset when I show up without pants.

Uncle Hunter always said, “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”  Uncle Hunter did crack.

That demoralization is not where it ends.  Looking at the news, we have seen our cities burn for months.  Sure, I don’t live in Minneapolis, and I’ve only been there a few times.  But Minneapolis is an American city.  To watch it burn is demoralizing – I don’t live in Minnesota, but if I’m an American it does hurt to watch an American city burn.  How bad is it?  BLM® and Antifa© have made cops look good.

It also shows us how far we’ve fallen.  Just like when we see people beaten on the streets for the crime of wearing a red hat that shows support for the president they voted for is a defeat for law and order.  I even heard where a protest started because an amputee’s limb got stolen – that was completely out of hand.

How do I know this?  Despite being the very example of an iron-willed observer of American politics, I occasionally admit to being human, too.  I don’t want Seattle to burn.  Or Minneapolis.  Or Portland.  These are American cities, built with American hands and American material and American labor.  We should be proud of them – we should want them to thrive.  Watching evil people destroy them?

It’s demoralizing.

Man, I hope I can get the two gyros for $6 deal there.

Me?  I’ve done several things to stop being personally demoralized:

  1. I’ve stopped listening to/reading things that sap my spirit.  I used to listen to NPR® – they used to tilt left, but still provide a decent coverage that wasn’t unhinged. Not after 2015.  I got very sick of the constant partisanship and anti-Americanism.  In one segment, an NPR™ correspondent told us how awful it was that we followed our own immigration laws and that it was immoral to report illegals.  In the very next segment?  Another correspondent told us how human trafficking of illegals was evil.    I’m gonna need a bigger scorecard for this one.  Which laws are we going to enforce this week?  Are pants optional?
  2. Drudge® used to be a great source of news. I thought he was balanced.  Now, after the Chinese bought his site?  Horribly tilted to the Left.  Me?  Scott Adams put me on to Ground News (LINK).  It’s a great site that actually analyzes the news in the most nonpartisan way that I’ve ever seen.  It shows which news stories are being slanted by the Left, and which ones are being slanted by the Right.  Goodbye, Drudge.  Last I heard he had an opinion about North Korean journalism:  “Can’t complain.”

I hear Best Korea is great at geometry.  They have a supreme ruler.

  1. I increased listening to/watching/reading things that add to my spirit.
    1. I like Scott Adams while I’m exercising.  There are more that I like and will share if you’re interested, but I’d love to see your suggestions below.
    2. Lots of new movies are just awful. They’re preachy, but to make up for that defect, they’re also not good.  Give me the Outlaw Josey Wales any day of the week over almost any movie not made by Mel Gibson in the last five years.  I think I enjoyed three new movies in all of 2019, and none of them were as good as Sean Connery’s home videos where he just eats crunchy breakfast cereal on camera and then asks for a bottle of gin.
    3. New books are, mostly, not as good as older ones. Missing?    Missing?  Humanity being the goal, not the problem.  Missing?  Girls in metal bras on the cover.
  2. It also helps to maintain or increase positive habits.
    1. Get enough sleep. This is one where I’m a chronic offender, at least during the week.  I’ll make it up on the other side of the dirt, I guess.
    2. Eat better. That’s been off and on this year.  Sadly, more off than on.  But I have found that what food I eat is very, very significant on my mood.  Also?  Rubbing butter on my chest may not help my attitude, but it does make my skin shiny and the dog will play with me.
    3. Exercise more. This is one that has immediate payoffs and long term payoffs.  The sad part is my employer seems to take a dim view of me just hanging out all afternoon in the gym with the weightbrahs.

A Canticle for Gibson?  At least one reader will get this.

There are some other things that can help, too:

  • Get rid of habits that make you feel bad. Which habits?  I know mine.  Do you know yours?
  • Fix things about your environment that upset you. Or don’t let them upset you.  I have a banister that’s been hanging for the better part of a decade now.  I walk by it at least once a day.  It doesn’t really bother me.  It’s also on my list.  I’m sure I’ll have it fixed by 2030 or so.
  • For me, prayer works. Your mileage may vary, and I certainly don’t criticize readers that think that all of the splendor and wonder and amazing complexity of humanity that lead to symphonies and sonnets and songs and Gilligan’s Island around us are random effects of a cosmic fluctuation.  Because all of that random probability is more likely than God, right?  Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have put Gilligan’s Island on the list, though that might be proof of Satan if it weren’t for Mary Ann.

A friend in college grew up next door to her.  She would come over and have coffee with his mom.  He had, um, conflicts about this.

We all own what goes into our minds, at least at this point in 2020.  We cannot be forced to consume media.  We choose what we watch, what we hear, what we read.  We don’t owe it to anyone, anyone at all to consume lies in the news that have more holes in them than Batman’s parents.

To be clear:  this isn’t an attempt to avoid reality.  We must face truth unafraid.  Each of us must be ready to go back onto that field in the freezing rain after halftime, down by 32 points.  And I’ll agree with you if you said we lost the game – the scoreboard would agree.  But we didn’t fail.  We played every down as hard as we could.

I’m not saying we should be deluded into thinking we’ll win every game we play, but giving in to fear about possible futures is demoralization itself.

The truth is that we cannot be demoralized without our own consent.

The easiest path?  Don’t consent.  Understand that, in the end?

We win.

2020 Isn’t Over: The 2020’s Are Just Starting

“Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I were a millionaire I could hook that up, too.  ‘Cause chicks dig dudes with money.” – Office Space

How many economists does it take to change a light bulb?  No idea.  They’re all still arguing over why the last one broke.

Why do I write about economics?  When people talk about economics, they have been trained to be bored.  Just talk about supply and demand curves and you’ll see eyes glaze over.  That’s why I, John Wilder, invented Sexy Economics®, because curves in bikinis rarely cause eyes to glaze over.  See, genius!

Economics is real, and it’s important.  And if you want to understand economics you’re probably more likely to learn it from a supermodel than from a Ph.D. in economics.

Catastrophes happen – heck, they happen all the time.  My first marriage was a catastrophe, and it only caused the First Gulf War and the eradication of several Bolivian villages.  That’s one of the reasons I got divorced – I didn’t want to be responsible for the thermonuclear destruction of mankind.

Some relationships are just that bad.

I just ended a long-term relationship.  Good thing it wasn’t mine!

As I look towards the 2020’s, I originally was going to write a year-by-year commentary on the coming decade, at least as it pertains to economics and the potential difficulties we face.  In one sense, it doesn’t matter who is going to be elected next Tuesday (or, a month from Tuesday if the courts get involved).  Part of the fate of the United States, and world economy in general, is already baked in the cake.

At this late stage in the American Experiment, both Republican and Democratic parties agree on one thing – spending money is exactly what each side wants.  In many cases, the spending that both sides want is identical, but differs only in very small ways:  ‘Rona stimulus bux?  Both sides agree.  Both sides (roughly) even agree on amounts:  “all of it.”  It’s easy that way – it’s not their money.

The only real difference (from what I’ve seen) is that the Democrats want to add in lots of payoffs to their favored groups and make it hard for Republicans to pay of their favored groups.  And vice versa.  Both want to open the money spigots.

Where does the money come from?

Printing it, silly.  Depending on tax revenue is for amateurs.

Printing money does, however, have consequences.  One consequence we’ve seen so far is that the previous WuFlu stimulus bills have been a money conveyor back to the richest people on Earth.  Can’t go shopping at the mall?  Your local store has been shut down by a totalitarian governor?

Bezos® can bring it!

I ordered hay for my horse from Amazon.  It upset me that two days later they wanted my feed back.

Need entertainment and can’t go out?  Netflix® can bring the latest repulsive Leftist propaganda!  Facebook®?  Twitter™?  All available.  And all ready for your stimulus bux, and all brought straight to Americans on Coronavirus-free, totalitarian-approved broadband.

How is it paid for?  Those same Stimulus bux.  The stimulus to the economy has been a conveyor of money straight to the wealthiest people on Earth.  The economy?  Well, it, at least temporarily dropped to 2008 levels.  And I shouldn’t have to remind you that 2008 wasn’t exactly a great year, unless you were John McCain’s brain tumor.

But what do the 2020s have to offer?  What trends will end up influencing our lives if we don’t end up as victims of John Wilder, Civil War Surgeon in Civil War 2.0?

  • Dollar Collapse.

To be fair, I’ve been expecting this one since the late oughts.  It really took years and years and years of utter mismanagement to get us to where we are today, and we really shouldn’t waste them.  I mean, we should take the example of the Australians.  They stocked up on toilet paper during the COVID-19 crisis, and were okay down under.

The signs of this particular currency collapse crisis will be unique, and an early warning will be a general increase in prices, like going to Wendy’s® and having to pay $5 for a burger.

Oops.

Government services will actually decrease.  Taxes may or may not go up, since no one really cares how much money the government has anymore.  As of 2020, the only thing holding the value of money up in the United States is inertia.  We can spend dollars internationally because everyone on Earth . . . will let us.

Why would they do that?

Unrelated news:  Chuck Norris burped today – Dallas gone.

The United States has thousands of nuclear weapons.  Who said that was a wasted investment, eh?  The Golden Rule isn’t really, “he who has the gold makes the rules,” it’s really, “he who has a nuclear arsenal and an advanced military and navy makes the rules.”

The biggest threat to the dollar isn’t the Federal Reserve™ printing it right and left.  Nope.  The biggest threat to the dollar are the Russians, Chinese, and Europeans saying that they’re not afraid anymore.  After that?  It’s autarky, where we have to depend on our own production.  That’s been the standard throughout much of history – countries have been, through the tyranny of distance, forced to be self-sufficient for all but the most luxurious of goods – if you’re in 1500’s Europe, you won’t be importing firewood to France over the Silk Road.

It won’t be so bad – the United States is still wealthy in energy, minerals, and agricultural products, and if we’re not?  We can push Canada over in an afternoon.  Trudeau would probably surrender if we sent him a nasty email.  (I love Canada, but, really, Trudeau???)

When does it hit?  Like I said, I’ve been expecting this one for quite a while.  I’m not sure the United States makes it to 2030.  Our primary saving grace?  The rest of the world’s economists ate glue in kindergarten and rode the short bus, just the same as the economists in the United States.

Consequence?  7/10.  Life goes on.  Except shabbier.  In some cases, especially older folks, life is far worse.  Most currency collapses take place in a span of a year or two, and people rapidly adjust.  Of course, those that only had the local money are now poor.  Precious metals are still the best investment:  gold, silver, and lead.

  • Energy.

The secret to American energy independence is fracking, and I don’t mean all the fracking that Hunter Biden has been doing in all of those pictures on the Internet.  But a little secret of fracking:  the fracked oil wells deplete very quickly – in some cases producing 90% of all of the oil they will ever produce in the first year.

Right now, the United States is not drilling so much.  Last year at this time, over 700 oil rigs were poking holes in the ground looking for sweet, sweet oil.  Last week there were 189.  Sure, that’s more than zero, but it’s not a lot.  Oil production is down.  That makes sense, since gasoline prices are so low you could use it instead of water for bathing in Texas.  Oil demand is down, by 15-20%.  You Texans?  Take more showers.

Hunter Biden has religion.  I heard he was a Crystal Methodist.

A nation doesn’t go from 700 active oil drilling rigs to less than 200 without sending a lot of people home.  And putting rigs in garages.  Or, more likely, losing those rigs to bankruptcy attorneys.  Heck, even my attorney was so hurt by the oil collapse he had to take a job cooking.  He’s now a sue chef.

So, if the economy ever gets going again it will hit a hard limit:  energy.  In the last few years people have forgotten that high energy cost is a tax that impacts almost every bit of physical production.  If it gets to your house, it shows up on a truck.  And you can’t cheat the system.  A currency collapse is like a hurricane or an ex-wife – it starts out crazy and wild, but in the end, it will take your house.

Imagine that, everything is starting to look good, and then?

Wham.  $6 a gallon gasoline.

That’s a great way to turn an economic recovery into an economic failure.  Regardless of Biden or Trump this will happen.  Biden will just make the response worse, because he’s like my browser:  17 tabs open, and he has no idea where the music is coming from.

When does it hit?  My bet is 2023 or 2024.

Consequences?  4/10 if Republican leadership, 8/10 if Democratic, since Leftists will use this as an excuse to put in Green Energy®, which has is not an energy program, it’s a program of social control.

 

  • Healthcare.

Ironically, healthcare is probably the biggest sickness in our economy.  Even before COVID-∞ showed up, our healthcare system was set up to fail.  The reason for failure is simple:  as a compassionate nation, we don’t really refuse service to anyone.  So, if an illegal immigrant mother from Mongolia and show up in an emergency room because one of your four hundred and fifty-one goat-children has the sniffles, they have to treat it.

And they can’t charge her if she can’t pay.

That explains why Pugsley went to the emergency room and got three stitches because whittling your left hand is easier than whittling a stick, it cost me $2400.  And, yes, I have insurance.  My insurance paid zero, though it did make me wish I’d have pulled out the needle and thread.

A native Alaskan tried to convince me to become an eye doctor when we lived in Alaska.  Sadly I was suffering from an Optical Aleutian.

This isn’t just an individual problem – it’s a system problem.  The first rule of real economics is:  incentives matter.  Thomas Sowell once said that if decent economists were in charge of bringing down automobile accidents, they wouldn’t put an airbag in the steering wheel – they’d put a Bowie knife pointed straight at the driver.  Then?  The driver would have the proper incentive to not cause an accident.

Our health care system has nearly zero good incentives.  Because of that, the system is broken – it’s a hidden tax on tens of millions of people who take responsibility versus a nation of tens of millions of freeloaders.

And it will, over time, bankrupt us.

When does it hit?  For the last 20 years, but it will become unsustainable (if trends continue) by 2028.

Consequences?  5/10, but 8/10 if you’re really sick or old.  Collapse of the healthcare system as it is.  Destruction of the insurance industry (which may be a good thing).  Eventual rationing of healthcare based on either cash, government mandate, or both.  Even for seniors.

There they are:  three potential fates for the 2020’s.  And you thought things would get better after 2020.

Ha!

Killing The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg

“Don’t eat the eggs. We put LSD in the eggs.” – The Men Who Stare At Goats

I never trust a goose journalist – too much propa-gander.

Aesop (no, not our modern one who appears to have just emerged from his self-imposed technological monkdom by solving the riddle of Aesop’s Cables– LINK) was a storyteller who died in 564 B.C.  This was long enough ago that the Greeks had yet to find the drug that stops the aging process:  hemlock.  To quote Socrates, “I drank what?”

But one of my favorite of Aesop’s stories is the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg.

The story is very simple, though when I was a kid they tarted it out so that it was fifteen minutes long and they could keep us shut up while the film ran so our teachers could take smoke breaks.  The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg involves a farmer and his wife.  They have a goose.  Each day, the goose lays a golden egg.  I know this sounds like the details found on page 347 of Joe Biden’s economic plan, but bear with me.

11 year old me thought that was amazing!

In Greek mythology, Chiron was a half-horse, half-human doctor.  I guess he was the Centaur for Disease Control.

Current day me?

I’d sell the goose to a private equity fund for $3 billion dollars and buy myself an island and then start a podcast where I drink bourbon every week with Elon Musk and lie to our wives about when we were going to come home.  We could call it Manhattans With Musk®.  Elon and I would just sit back and laugh as the private equity fund clones the goose and then crashes the gold market with goose clone gold.

Or maybe the cloning process doesn’t work and the private equity fund then has 45,000 cloned geese that lay eggs made out of whatever fake metal the Chinese use (Chinesium®?) to make all those tiny metal statues of Bandersnatch Combersnoot.  I mean Blandercrab Clambakehatch.  Blendersnout Clumberbake?  Oh, yeah, Benedict Cumberbatch, that I bought on Ebay® after too many Manhattans.

Okay, this is actually a chocolate statue of Bunderslam Camberthatch.  We had a dog that weighed six pounds and ate a one pound bag of chocolate.  Killed him.  14 years later.

But back to Aesop.

In Aesop’s story, the stupid farmers couldn’t cope with getting a single, solid gold goose egg each day.  Nope.

An aside:  How much would a golden goose egg be worth?

The answer, at $1900 per ounce gold, is $176,640.  (For those of you playing our home game:  remember to convert to troy ounces.)

So, yeah, these greedy Greek peasants couldn’t just wait and have $176,640 a day show up out of the goose’s butt.  So?

They killed it.

What do the Irish call fool’s gold?  Shamrock.

Yes.  They killed it.  And when they took their pudgy stupid fingers and looked for gold?  They found nothing but Greek goose guts.  Oops!  Instead of having a creature that slowly made them immensely wealthy, they ended up with whatever it is you eat that’s made out of goose.  Pâté de foie gras?  It’s okay if you want your goose . . . de-livered.

I bring this up, because that’s what’s happening to Western Civilization.  I mean, not being made into pâté, but having the goose that gave Western Civilization our prosperity is being killed.

And it really is happening.

Right now.

The wonderful and amazing thing about Western Civilization is that it has produced, by far, the greatest amount of prosperity and wealth ever seen in the history of mankind.  Heck, North Korea loves western rock:  Sweet Child In A Mine is one of their favorite songs.  They love the Guns,  but said we can keep the Roses.  Regardless, there has never in the history of the world been a group as amazing as Western Civilization has been.

Ever.

Nearly every invention that’s worth mentioning has been invented by Western Civilization.  Nearly all the wealth that’s been produced in the world, has been produced through ideas started in Western Civilization.

So, we all win, right?

Well, no.

I’ve heard (years ago) propaganda that claimed that every culture is equally valid.  This is, of course, a Big Lie®.  I’m not saying that people who live in mud huts who really know how to wok a dog must move to the suburbs and eat McDonalds®.  Certainly not!  If people wish to live in mud huts and eat cât-e de foie gras?  That’s fine – I sincerely hope that they enjoy it.  Nah, I don’t – just kitten.

But they have no right to move to the suburbs in Minnesota and have people pay for their every need.

Cannibals never eat entitled kids – they always taste spoiled.

But in 2020, the idea that everyone on Earth is, somehow, entitled to live in a society that they had exactly no part in creating?  Sure!  Let’s call it a right.  They devastated their home country, so why not let them do that in Minneapolis, too?

As near as I can figure it out, the only answer as to why this happens is Leftism.  Leftism is fixated on creating a world where equality of outcome is the biggest goal.  That means that no person on Earth should have anything more than any other.

Except, of course, for actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and billionaires like Bill Gates and important people in Washington D.C. like the guy who writes the tax code.  I sincerely hope that Leonardo DiCaprio never gets injured in a car accident on a Star Wars® movie – I would hate it if he were Han DiCaprio.

The answer is always famine.

But to a Leftist, a murderer in prison is due the same physical comforts and opportunities as an upstanding member of the community that has worked 2500 hour years for decades and saved their money for retirement.  Of course, the irony is that when everyone has the right to move to the United States, it ends with no one having any rights at all.  Except for Leonardo DiCaprio, Bill Gates, and that guy who writes the tax code.

This is the reality of Leftism in the West:  Leftists feel that prosperity comes from (shakes Magic 8-Ball®) luck.  Except when they win, in which case it was completely deserved.  Leftists believe that since prosperity is unequally distributed, they can just redistribute it at will because prosperity isn’t earned.

This is the same idea that led to walls around the communist countries in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s:  People are the property of the state.  Differences in outcomes aren’t the result of cultural differences.  Differences in outcomes must be a mistake, right?

According to Leftists, yes.

As I write these words, the West is facing a crossroads in every single Western country.  The idea corrupting it is simple and insidious:   that Western achievement is based on nothing but theft and lies, and that all men on Earth should be able to move to Western countries because everyone on Earth is owed the same lifestyle as people in Western countries have.

Used with permission.

This, my friends, is killing the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg as Aesop described over 2,500 years ago. The major theme of Leftism in 2020 is that cultures that exists on a pre-technological level, and that the residents of said culture should have the right to not only live in, but live in and direct the cultures of Western culture.

For whatever reason, the cultures of many nations have failed to produce a society that is capable of producing Western Civilization levels of comfort and wealth.  It’s beyond this post to describe why that is.  I’m sure that a culture producing wealth and prosperity is all random.  Speaking of random, what’s the difference between a Leftist and a random word generator?  Sometimes the random word generator tells the truth.

But hey, at least we’ll still have hemlock.

Right?

Liveblogging: The Debate At The End Of The Universe

“To cover some hot news?  Like the Lincoln-Douglas debates?” – Kolchak, the Night Stalker

I have a lot of experience with debate – I use debate to catch defish.

This is the post where we’ll do the liveblogging in the comments tomorrow.  I know there are probably some technically better ways to do it, but I’m going this way because everyone already knows how to get here and how to hit the refresh button on your browser.  Clumsy as a pit bull doing brain surgery?  Sure.  But that’s politics.

This will be the last debate for both Joe Biden and Donald Trump.  That’s not as bold a prediction as it might sound at first.

Donald will either retire after his next term (most likely), declare himself emperor (second most likely) so he’s done.  But if he declares himself emperor, imagine the reign of Trump Barron the First, as he annexes first Canada in Operation Leafblower, then Mexico in Operation Tequila Shooter, and finally Europe.  There won’t need to be an actual military action to take over Europe, they’ll just send over six Texans with varmint rifles to handle the light work.  As long as the Texans speak the national language of Europe, Arabic, it’ll be easy.

I’m sure this was what the Resistance was fighting for, n’est-ce pas?  (used with permission)

In this timeline, we all rise and salute the birth of the American Empire where there is a burger in every mouth, and riding mowers for every butt.  But there is another timeline.

Joe Biden is obviously still good at reading things if he’s had his Ovaltine® and seven straight days in a hyperbaric Tupperware™ container.  Since there won’t be a teleprompter at this debate, he’ll have to make due with radio signals.  If Joe wins, however, there is zero, and I mean zero probability that he will be able to finish a term as president without being removed from office because he lost every memory that occurred after that time his grandpa made him a scooter by nailing rollerskates to planks during the War of 1812.

Biden is gone, mentally.  If Biden is elected, I’m expecting that President Harris will take over by, oh, February.  She and Vice President Amy Schumer will then begin the exhausting task of attempting to subvert everything that produced prosperity in America.  I predict they’ll start by introducing a strict set of regulations governing how food in breakroom refrigerators is treated, even though Antifa® will by this time have conquered Sesame Street® and have declared it a sovereign nation, with focus on the letter ‘C’, the number ‘1917’ and the month of ‘October’.

Joe Biden finished a Sesame Street puzzle in only six hours.  He was proud.  On the box it said three to five years!

In a rare scoop for this website, I have obtained internal Biden-Harris campaign emails discussing the response to the ongoing Chinese Water Torture® release of ever more damning information about the Biden family.

From:  Joe Biden
Date:  October 16, 2020
To:  Jennifer Dillon (Campaign Manager for Joe Biden – J.W.)
Subject:  Hunter’s Sex Drive

Melanie.  I mean Susan.  How do I switch this thing over to Showtime®?

Can I get some of those hard candies?  The yellow ones.  The peppermint ones make my eyes ache, which makes it hard to read the helicopter.  Butterstache are my favorite.

Did I hear someone say that Hunter’s sex drives have been found?  There were people yelling that as I was, well, I’m not sure what I was doing.  But why is everyone worried about Hunter’s sex drives?  Wasn’t him knocking up a stripper proof enough, you dog faced pony soldier?  The man’s got plenty of sex drives.

 

From:  Jennifer Dillon
Date:  October 16, 2020
To:  Joe Biden
Subject:  Re:  Hunter’s Sex Drives

Boss,

No, what they found were hard drives from Hunter’s old computers.  It seems that he took laptops from the Beau Biden Foundation (the place where we launder get money from Soros and the Clintons) and then used them for Facebook® and porn surfing.  I think he liked Netflix™, too, but it seems that he’s using your login information.  At least I hope that’s the case, and that it wasn’t you watching Cuties every night since it came out.

All we can piece together is that, incredibly high on crack, Hunter couldn’t figure out why the computers weren’t working.  The fact that he hadn’t charged them in a month was a mystery to his drug-addled brain – he kept getting new computers and using them and then, assuming they were broken, took them all in to get repaired.

He had no idea, zero, of where he took them.  Did you know he was sniffing model airplane glue again?

Looks like he did give the repair place his password, “BIDEnROX69DUDE.”

 

From:  Joe Biden
Date:  October 17, 2020
To:  Jennifer Dillon
Subject:  Re: Re: Hunter’s Sex Drives

Oh.  The n doesn’t look right.  Is that how they spell now?

I’m glad he’s making models again.  Spent enough money on that kid’s model making hobby when he was a kid to buy a Syrian child.  Funny, Hunter said he just needed the glue – he said he could make his own kit.  He was dedicated – making models until he was thirty-five!

Where are my pants?  Has anyone seen that Filipino kid?  The one who smells like jasmine in the jungle?  I need someone to rub my feet.

 

From:  Jennifer Dillon
Date:  October 17, 2020
To:  Joe Biden
Subject:  Re: Re: Re: Hunter’s Sex Drives

Boss,

Great news!  I called up our contacts at Twitter®, Google™, and Facebook© and they’ve all agreed to make sure NO ONE sees this story.  It turns out that these emails suggest you took millions of dollars of money from Hunter and then used the power of the United States Government to cover it up!

Our team did a great job on the cover up.  And I think that we can count on places like Snopes®, the New York Times©, and the Washington Post™ to bury this until after Kamala takes over you’re elected president!

We’ll just hide you until the debate.  We’ll practice on Wednesday.  And no walking outside in your bathrobe like last week.

 

From:  Joe Biden
Date:  October 20, 2020
To:  Jennifer Dillon
Subject:  Re: Re: Re: Hunter’s Sex Drives

Just got up.  Man, I feel better.  What was in that blue pill?

The Facebook® is that button on my Blackberry™, right?  I just press it.  Then my snap chats, right?

How did you fix the button on my thingamabob so that it doesn’t talk to me about Hunter’s sex drives?  Did you have to change the floppy drive?

Oh, and if we want to practice debating, we should get Jeffery Toobin in here.  I hear he’s a master debater.

I hear Jeffrey Toobin wrote a romance novel – it was a real tearjerker.

Okay, these aren’t really their emails.  I don’t know about you, but I’d love to see the real emails.  They’re probably higher in actual humor value than these.

See you tonight.  I’ll even drag The Mrs. downstairs for the final debate.

Life Is A Road. I Drive A Used Car.

“First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?” – Silence of the Lambs

The local bank in Modern Mayberry was robbed by a ghost – it was a polterheist.

Blog note:  I will be live blogging the debate on Thursday night along with The Mrs. but I cannot promise to drink as much as last time.  I’ll be here 15 minutes beforehand.  I’ll put up a post tomorrow for the liveblog.

As careful regular readers have probably noticed, I’m generally a strong advocate of living within your means.  That means not blowing all of your money on PEZ®, fast women (or slow men), and anything related to the movie Highlander II when your paycheck hits the bank.

If you look at life as a road, debt is a great valley.  Once you drop in, it’s very hard to get out, because the deeper you get in the steeper the valley walls are.  I mean, yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death Debt, at least it’s nice to get some time outside.

Even though I’m against debt, there are exceptions, unlike my “no exception policy” about dating married women.  The Mrs. gets a little irritated about that one.

Never date a girl with a lazy eye.  They’re always seeing someone else.

Houses don’t count, as long as you live in them and don’t consider them an investment.  I understand that few people have the cash to buy a house, so everyone gets a pass there.  Heck, I’ve paid off most of my mortgage, so now it’s officially lessage.

The other debt that is (again, generally) acceptable is a marketable education.  Does this include a degree in Grievance Studies, X-Box Couch Engineering or Snack Maintenance?

Of course not.  No business wants to hire those people, unless their HR department needs drones to be sacrificed to feed the Queen HR Bee her nectar.

The biggest killer to a happy life is debt.  It hangs over you.  When I was in debt, I thought about it several times a day, wondering how I could ever get out of debt.  Thankfully, no one really needs both kidneys.

Even worse than debt is the interest you have to pay on debt.  Not only do you have to pay back money you didn’t have in the first place, you have to pay more back.  Probably the only weapons greater in destructiveness in international relations than nuclear bombs are interest rates.  Oddly, it isn’t listed as an act of war to send in the International Monetary Fund to make loans to nations who can’t afford toilets.

My mother-in-law said her dogs liked to drink out of the toilet because the water was cool and fresher than the water in their bowls.  Then I began to wonder – how did she know that?

As an aside, I indicated once that I thought that a moratorium on all interest payments was worthy of consideration.  There was a huge pushback from readers indicating I didn’t understand how the modern economy worked.  In the meantime, European Central Banks have issued debt with a negative interest rate.  For those not paying attention, that means if you deposit money, you have to pay the bank for the privilege of depositing it.  It just shows the old story is true, give a man a gun and he’ll rob a bank.  Give a man a bank?  He’ll rob everyone.

Hmmm.  And I was told that I don’t understand how the modern economy works.  I think I’ll win this one in the long run.

Debt is a killer.  Many Americans borrow money for a cool pickup truck to drive to work to have enough money to pay for a cool pickup that they can drive to work so they have enough money to pay for a cool pickup so they can drive to work so that they have enough money to pay for a cool pickup . . . .  (Lather, rinse, repeat.)

Hmmm.

What do you call a fight between loan sharks?  A conflict of interest.

I did tell an employee that was reporting to me that I suggest that people never buy a new car unless they had a cool million, cash.  I stand by that.  There are reasons for that:

  • Older cars last longer than almost every Hollywood marriage. Especially to Angelina Jolie and her coven of children stolen from each continent on Earth, except Antarctica, because there are some things that even penguins won’t put up with.
  • Generally, older cars cost less to maintain than a Hollywood starlet. And they maintain their value better, too.  Ever try to trade Jamie Gertz for a ’67 Camero?  Zero takers.
  • If you follow the N+1 rule (one car for each driver in the house who has to go to school or work plus a single spare for the whole family) your job is safe. You always have a car that works even if that car is older than Madonna’s first facelift.

Following this rule has saved me tens of thousands of dollars in car payments.  It has saved me tens of thousands of dollars in car insurance payments, tens of thousands of alimony payments to disgruntled starlets, and thousands in car taxes.  But it’s also a lifestyle – you have to be comfortable not having your ego wrapped up in cars.

That’s just one facet of turning down luxury.

My friends say I have a big ego, but enough about them.

Your income will fluctuate throughout your career.  It’s really okay to indulge from time to time, based on that income.  For me, that indulgence has been reflected in:

  • Nicer wine. Not great wine, but not pruno, either.
  • Amazon® doo-dads. If I saw a sphere of tungsten on Amazon™ and it was 2AM and I had a few beers, maybe I’d buy it (it’s on the sitting room coffee table).  For those not in the know – tungsten is extraordinarily dense, somewhere close to gold, but not as dense as a CNN® contributor who can’t tell if the Zoom© call is on “mute” before defending Sparta all by himself, if you know what I mean.
  • Not questioning every purchase of The Mrs. When dollars are tight, the marriage has to be tighter, since every purchase is a joint decision.  Then I become, “why did you have to use two sheets of paper towel on that” man.  For reference, Jeffery Toobin only needed one sheet of paper towel.

But built into this is that purely fun purchases happen only if you’re debt-free with a good income stream coming in.  If not?  It’s a joint decision.  With projections.  And charts.  It takes a good marriage to deal with that.

The most important part of luxury is making sure that you can walk away from it.

Is my pride in my car?

Well, no.  Obviously.  My newest car is five years old and that’s The Mrs.’ daily driver.  The one I drive regularly was built just after they found Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole in the desert.  My ego isn’t wrapped up in my car.

I bought a cheese grater that was owned by both Josef Stalin and Saddam Hussein.  It was the grater of two evils.

One of my favorite stories revolves around a group of Dallas housewives who were at a kid soccer game.  All of the mothers are there with the latest models of cars from Lexus® and Mercedes™ and Audi©.  But one mother drives up in a ten-year-old Buick™ and drops off her kid.

“I wish I was like her,” one mother said to another, “so rich that she can drive an older car.”

I read a statistic a few years ago – I’ve never been able to find it again.  But it said that something like 70% of people driving around in a Mercedes™ had a loan on it.  Think about that – me in my old car with one light-second of miles on it, owned free and clear, has more money than the average Dallas housewife.

Pursuit of life for the pursuit of pleasure is, in the end, a meaningless pursuit.  The idea isn’t that the road is easy, the idea is that you have the strength for the road.  Pleasure isn’t a goal, it’s a side trip that should last a few days.

Then, back to the road.

Free Speech? This Week Proves It Is Not On The Menu If The Left Wins.

“If you got a gun in your hand, you’re free to make any speech you want to.” – All in the Family

I believe this meme to be false.  Does that mean Snopes® has been debunked?

The biggest story of last week wasn’t the emails that allegedly show that Hunter Biden snorts coke off of hooker butts.  Oh, and that he and his father worked in an alleged scheme to illegally take millions of dollars from foreign companies and governments to gain influence inside the United States, or what politicians and bureaucrats in Washington D.C. call “Tuesday.”

No.  That wasn’t the story.  Corruption?

The biggest story of last week was censorship.  Again.

This time, the censored were targeted by two of the usual suspects, Twitter® and Facebook™.  What they censored (fairly effectively) was all of the Hunter Biden-related pictures and emails.  Sure, millions of people have seen them, but they have largely been effective at shielding voters who are undecided from this information.  Let’s face it – the Democrat idea of a bookmark is a lit match.

And it wasn’t random “conspiracy theorists” – this time it was the New York Post®, the newspaper with the fourth-largest circulation in the United States.

Yes, that’s a real headline. 

Twitter® suspended account after account for publishing links to the New York Post™, including a White House press secretary, James Woods, and journalist Jack Posobiec.  Yes.  Twitter© turned off their accounts for publishing a link to a story in the New York Post®.  Then Twitter© changed their software so you couldn’t even post the link.

Normally they also delete posts that are connected to barbed wire – they don’t want to cause a fence.

What reason did Twitter™ give?  That the story contained personal email addresses and phone numbers, and that the story relied on illegally obtained material.  Well, there certainly are email addresses and phone numbers in the story, but those had already been obtained by thousands of Ukrainian strippers and also printed in the New York Post™ for over 200,000 people, and unknown (but huge) numbers of readers on the Post© website.

Yet, when Trump’s taxes were the subject of the disappointingly boring story that Trump has good tax attorneys?  Twitter® censored those posts, right?

No.

But Twitter™ took the account of the New York Post© offline.  Yup.  A newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton before he became black were taken offline for  . . . publishing news.  This like when they canceled the Chicago performance of Hamilton, the Musical because it was too cold.  Once again Brrr killed Hamilton.

I once locked my keys in my car.  Bothered me because it was going to rain and the top was down.

Twitter™ even placed a message on a Tweet® by a Senate Committee that the link listed was “potentially unsafe” and Biden hadn’t even sniffed anyone.

My mechanic told me my car was unsafe.  I told him that bad brakes had never stopped me before.

Facebook™ did much the same, by “limiting sharing” of the story and noting that it would be fact-checked.

By who?  Who is in charge of making these decisions?  Generally, the “fact-checking” executives and organizations are heavily Leftist.  And why not?  The Left views control of speech as a primary weapon in the cultural war.  Thankfully, there is someone checking on the checkers:

See, I thought corruption was only a problem at pretzel companies, where they’re all twisted.

Effectively, Facebook® and Twitter© have taken sides in an election.  How much would the Biden-Harris campaign pay for those companies to shut down negative coverage of Joe?  $100 million?  $200 million?

Yes.  They would (and could) pay them that much.  But they don’t have to pay them, because they are doing it for free.  At least it’s just Twitter™ and Facebook©?

Well, no.  Try Wikipedia®’s article on the Hunter Biden controversy.  If you were to believe that article, you’d be told that it was absolutely false that Hunter Biden ever did any of the things that we are now getting email confirmation of.  Here’s a Breitbart article on this (LINK) subject.  Thanks, Wikipedia™.

But not to be outdone, the New York Times™ shows that it’s been in the bag for Joe for months:

I heard a lot of New Yorkers had to use the newspaper for toilet paper during the Coronavirus shortage.  The Times were rough.

I suppose that everyone is entitled to their own opinion.  But when factual information that shows that potential crimes have occurred at the highest levels of our government are suppressed?  That shows that, finally, Leftist ideology will triumph over journalistic integrity every time.  But the biggest integrity champion?  The swimming pool on the Titanic.  Still full.

There is, of course, the big libertarian argument:  Facebook™, Wikipedia©, and Twitter® are private companies and can do as they wish.

Well, no.  They are private companies and can do any legal thing that they wish to do.  As I mentioned above, the Biden-Harris campaign would pay hundreds of millions of dollars for favorable treatment like they have been getting.  Have they written a check to those companies?  No.  But Biden and Harris intend to give them billions of dollars.

How?

Through laws that have yet to be put in place that will favor them.  Today’s actions to repress knowledge are (in my non-lawyerly opinion) nothing more than in-kind campaign contributions, even though Kamala has the California black vote all locked up.

Poor Bernie – he has Post Traumatic Debate Disorder.

YouTube® has joined in, too.  Thirty big channels were just permanently shut down – big in that some had nearly a million subscribers.  Here’s a list of just those greater with more than 200,000 subscribers, thanks to USSA News (LINK), H/T to Vox for the source (LINK).

  • X22 Report (952,000 subscribers)
  • SGTreport (630,000 subscribers)
  • Edge of Wonder (467,000 subscribers)
  • Praying Medic (391,000 subscribers)
  • And We Know (385,000 subscribers)
  • Amazing Polly (375,000 subscribers)
  • Joe M (367,000 subscribers)
  • Dollar Vigilante (304,000 subscribers)
  • Mouthy Buddha (296,000 subscribers)
  • JustInformed Talk (281,000 subscribers)
  • RedPill78 (269,000 subscribers)
  • The Patriot Hour (248,000 subscribers)
  • In Pursuit of Truth (242,000 subscribers)
  • Destroying the Illusion (238,000 subscribers)
  • TRUreporting (215,000 subscribers)

I wasn’t a regular listener of any of them, but I had heard a video or two from some of them.  The common thread?

All of them were on the Right.

This has been a theme since Alex Jones was shut out of the Twitter®-YouTube™-Facebook© ecosystem.  Jones was a canary in the free-speech coalmine, and when they attempted to silence him it was greatly disturbing to me.  Someone asked why I was so upset that a conspiracy theorist had been banned, and I said, “Why?  Who are you working for??”  It was obvious that this would not be the last banning, and the reasons for banning would become increasingly frivolous.

Three conspiracy theorists walk into a bar.  You can’t tell me that’s a coincidence!

Now, banning takes place regularly and goes after increasingly more innocuous content.  Innocuous unless you are on the Left, that is.  If you’re on the Left?  No dissenting voices are allowed.  How bad are they?

Worse than you can imagine.

A Reddit link sent me to a comment section there, where they argued that all (and I mean all) of the 1980’s action movies were fascist.  The people commenting were unwittingly sharing their true agenda – the destruction of everything that the United States ever was, or ever stood for.  I heard that Arnold Schwarzenegger was upset, even though he has given up movies for the pest control business: he is an ex-terminator.

Earl could talk for 70 minutes at the Town Council meeting about the best ways to feed gophers.

Freedom of speech was popular with the Left as long as they could use it to push their minority opinion.  Now?  They realize that freedom of speech is their mortal enemy once they get into power.  It’s fine to pretend that Leftism provides answers as long as we don’t actually use those ideas.  Every time, and I mean every single time they’ve been tried they lead to misery.

How do you keep miserable people under control?  No freedom of speech.

Oh, and never forget, the Second Amendment?

It protects the First.

The 2020 Election: Don’t Let It Make You Crazy

“We’re here to preserve democracy, not practice it.” – Crimson Tide

The Times Square New Year’s Eve Committee asked Hillary to join the committee.  Turns out that sometimes dropping the ball at the last minute is a resume builder!

We are currently in the “crazy season.”  As years of elections go by, people on every side of the political question have become better at influence and persuasion.  Why?  The prize is huge.  Political power provides billions of dollars, if not trillions, for favored industries.  In the 2020’s – it also means immunity from prosecution for supporters of the winners.

Like Hunter Biden, the stakes are high.

Political campaigns, unlike the NBA®, learn over time.  What worked last election?  What didn’t work?  What does the focus group say?

After the primaries, the campaign isn’t focused on getting the votes of die-hard supporters.  All seven of the people in the United States who are “really excited” to vote for JoePedo will vote for JoePedo.   Who is JoePedo?

JoePedo was an early slogan of the Left that sorta backfired on them.  They were going for Joe as a torpedo, not as, well, a Pedo.  It’s important to understand how people might make fun of your name.

Thankfully, in 2020, ISIS is WASWAS.

About 99% of Biden voters are only voting for Biden because he’s Not Trump.  They will continue to vote for Biden as long as he doesn’t turn into Trump.  Biden could kill and eat live kittens on during the debate, naked, while taking billions of dollars in checks from Satan for “services rendered”, and Never Trumpers would still vote for him.  Heck, let’s be really honest:  they don’t even require a pulse.  Given Biden’s mental, umm, “difficulties” it’s obvious that even dementia isn’t a disqualifier.

Trump voters are (mostly) voting for Trump because he’s Trump – a finger in the eye of the establishment.  Trump voters are unhappy with a country that they see is no longer a country.  In the view of Leftists, the United States is nothing more than an economic entity, one which every person on the globe has a right to move to.  Trump voters reject that.

Never-Trumpers are gonna vote Biden, and Trump doesn’t care about them.  Trump voters are gonna vote Trump.  Biden doesn’t care about them.

Neither campaign is attempting to get the votes of the diehard supporters of the other candidate.  Instead, this last campaign stretch is only to convince the people who follow politics so little that they haven’t figured out who they’re voting for.  But right now?  Both sides are pulling out all of the stops.

I can hear the campaign staffer defending his meme:  “At least it’s better than Turboanalisis.”

JoePedo will tell you that he’s running for the Senate if his handlers aren’t able to shut him up in time.  But the staffers in the know managed to get Trump’s tax records to the New York Times®.  The fact that this is a felony, well, who cares, right?  If Biden wins, a felony is just a wink and a nod.  But the taxes seem to be a poor weapon:  there’s nothing of interest, outside of the fact that Trump has way better tax advisors than I do.

But Team Biden isn’t done.  They have at least three “gotcha” attacks planned for Trump in the next 20 days.  And those attacks will escalate.  They’re saving their best attacks for last.

But Trump will fight back.  Trump has an arsenal of information on the JoePedo.  He’s going to unleash it, bit by bit, like a Chinese water torture.  And he’ll Tweet® and laugh the whole time.

My prediction that we hadn’t yet seen the craziest part of 2020 is proving to be stunningly accurate.  Honestly, it was really an easy prediction – the only prediction that is easier is that the Sun will rise tomorrow, or that Ruth Bader Ginsburg won’t.

What do you call a Supreme Court Justice that was so cheap she would eat the scraps on other people’s plates at the diner?  Booth Raider Ginsburg.

The goal of these next twenty days is manipulation.

Now, when The Mrs. was just The Miss and we first started dating, one particular date we had was one we called the Forever Date.  It started on a Friday night, when we went to play mini-golf.  Mini-golf is a great date idea.  Everyone sucks at mini-golf, and seeing how a potential spouse deals with being awful is a great insight on their personality.  Sadly the courses are packed now, since the economy is so bad that CEOs are now forced to play miniature golf.

But after mini-golf?  Dinner.  Then we walked down and got an expensive coffee at a hippy coffee bar.  Then we went back to my place and watched Babylon 5.  The next day, we had a bunch of other things on our schedule – a renaissance fair, a play, out to another dinner, and a movie.  In all, we had spent 24 hours together in two days.

In that time, we had done a lot of things.  The sheer number of things that we did made that 24 hours seem like weeks – it compressed and amplified our relationship.  It didn’t hurt that most of the activities, outside of the play and the movie, involved a lot of conversation.

In a weird way, this Forever Date was manipulative.  Unintentionally so – but when you put a compatible unmarried man and woman together?

  • And put them through activity after activity?
  • Fun things, unique things, unusual things?
  • That involve conversation?

After learning about how couples interact as I got older, the only answer is if you put people into the circumstances that The Miss and I were in?  Those people are going to become close.  And if even remotely compatible?  Married.

Jesus turned water into wine, most men drink to make a six look like a nine.

That same time compression is exactly what the manipulators want from voters right now.  They want to hit the voter with crisis after crisis until the voter’s mind is available for persuasion.  Like the Three Stooges, the candidates want Moe-mentum.

The persuasion we’re seeing now is aimed squarely at the undecided voters.  It’s ironic that the people who care the least and know the least about politics decide the election every four years.  It’s like having the Senator without thumbs winning every election, but that’s not surprising since he’s unopposed.

Remember, Kamala placed lower than all of the above candidates.  It’s okay, she’s used to being on the bottom.

So, the next twenty days will be filled with more information than in any election in the history of the United States.  It worked really well when there was a last minute announcement that George W. Bush had been arrested for Driving Under the Influence.  That cost him a lot of votes.

When John McCain was told by the news media that the problem was all in his head, he took the news media seriously.  Those videos of Sarah Palin painting seals and birds with oil?  Yeah, those hurt.

Okay, the fact that McCain’s personality had all the warmth of a Soviet Gulag and all the compassion of an African tribal war is what really cost him the election.  Sarah Palin?  I could have been Michael Palin and they still would have lost the election.

Michael is still a funnier Palin than Sarah.

But, like I said, campaigns are a learning organization, and they have learned that October is the best time to spring a surprise.  So the result is that every four years, October will get progressively crazier until each political party hires individual mimes to stalk and convince undecided voters.  There are dangers to hiring mimes:  one of my relatives became a mime – I haven’t heard from him since.

Here in 2020, however, knowing what they’re doing is enough.  It’s certain that voters are fine in convincing themselves, but when it comes to propaganda?  They resist.  The only solution is to confuse them with so much information that they become susceptible to changing their mind.  And thinking that they changed it themselves.

This particular election will be the most expensive in history.  Yet, the election will likely come down to relative handfuls of voters in a few key states.  California?  Not an issue.  But Pennsylvania?  Wisconsin?

But you’re not likely the target.  And here’s the key – if all of the nonsense you’ll hear in the next few days annoys you?  All of the radio ads?  The campaign mailers?

Ignore it.

My kids voted for pizza for dinner the other night.  They got tacos.  We don’t live in a swing state.

The real key to life has nothing to do with the daily news cycle.  The real key to life has to do with keeping your values in sight.

And that’s good news.  If you want to ignore the political nonsense going on right now, you can.

If, like me, you want to enjoy the nonsense with a bag of hot popcorn?

You can do that, too.  It may be the crazy season, but it doesn’t have to drive you crazy.

If you feel yourself getting crazy from this political season, don’t worry.  If you get lost, you can always take the psychopath.