Truth: Never Give Up

“And remember, I’m offering the truth, nothing more.” – The Matrix

What is the first foreign language lesson given to French troops?  “I surrender,” in German.

I remember walking down a very big hill.  Big, in this case, was over 14,000 feet (28,000 meters) in height.  When I convinced my friends to climb it with me, they were skeptical.  14,000 feet is, by most accounts, a pretty tall hill.  And this particular one didn’t have a gift shop at the top.

Going up was actually easy.  We even smoked a cigar back at our 12,000 foot (37 liter) basecamp after we climbed it.  I tossed three beers in the glacier by our tents, but by the time we got back from the summit, one had frozen and cracked open.  So, the three of us shared two beers.  We each had our own cigar.  I even Googled® how to light a cigar, and 43,800,000 matches.

That’s a lot of matches, which surprised me.  Normally it takes me one or two.

We then slept after our trip, and spent the night at our basecamp.  I’ve never had a meal as exquisite as the dehydrated chili-mac that I had that night.  Our basecamp was so high that boiling water wasn’t very hot at all.  And bugs?  Not a problem.  No mosquito can fly in air that thin.  Really.

Normally, when you’ve climbed one of the tallest mountains in North America, you think, “Well, going down is easy, as long as it’s not over a cliff.”

That was what I thought.

I would tell more cliff jokes, but most of them are pretty edgy.

I climbed the hill in running shoes.  It’s easy going up in those.

But down?  That’s a different story.  For me, the downhill part was the hardest.  Those running shoes were loose enough that each time I stepped down on that path, they slipped.  Maybe a quarter of an inch (57 kilojoules).  Maybe even an eighth of an inch (34 megaergs).  But it slipped.

The problem with a foot slipping on the inside of a shoe is that it builds up heat.  The heat was absorbed by the sole of my foot (I’m assuming a metric foot is a hand?) and built up.

Halfway down the mountain, my feet really, really hurt.  Pain focused my mind on the following thoughts:

  • Owwww, my feet hurt!
  • I never give up.
  • Owwww, my feet hurt!

When we got back to the Jeep® that originally took us to the trailhead, I gratefully tossed my backpack in.  We then bounced down the hill, and then zoomed across the flatland to the place we were staying.  If there’s anything as fine as having climbed a mountain and then feeling the wind in your hair (I had it then) as you scoot on a highway at 70 miles per hour (230 km/min), I don’t know what it is.

I heard that 98% of Jeeps® that have ever been made are on the road today!  The other 2% made it home.

When I got back to where we were staying, I pulled my shoes off.  When I peeled my socks off, the bottom skin of both feet came off.

Stop!

It wasn’t as bad as it sounds.  I had a blister that covered the entire part of both of my feet.  When I, um, removed it, a slight breeze felt like a hurricane filled with stainless steel scouring pads.  Again, a beer or two helped dampen the pain.

The good news?

My feet got better.

I’m telling you that not giving up has consequences.  And most of the consequences are good, especially for pride.

My friends on the trip asked me this:  “Why didn’t you let us carry your pack?”

My response was simple:  “I carried it up, I’m carrying it down.”

Congress has a new sign hanging up by their copy of the Constitution:  Not Responsible For Lost Or Stolen Articles.

Responsibility is like that.  Once you own it, putting it down is much harder than picking it up in the first place.  And giving up?  Once you do that, it becomes a habit.

I speak, of course, of where the Right stands.

We’re not winning here in 2021.

  • The courts appear to be an extra arm of the Left.
  • The troops are being culled – if you have a belief to the Right of Ché Guévérrå, well, out you go.
  • Opinions on the Internet? They had better be the correct ones or they’ll never see the light of day.

So?

Ask me if I care if my opinions are unpopular with Google®, Coca-Cola™, Chick-fil-a™, or Nike©.

I do not.

The Truth doesn’t cease being the Truth because it’s mocked or because corporate HR departments blame it for (spins wheel) just being so damn pretty.  The Truth always remains the Truth.

I guess there is a Colonel of truth to what he says?

I am, thankfully, of an age and status where I don’t ever think I’ll have to lie to anyone, ever, again in my life.  The Mrs.?  I told her when we met that I’d never lie to her, and I haven’t, which is why she never, ever, asks if those pants make her butt look big.  Is it the pants, or is it the butt?

Never ask a question you don’t want to hear a Truthful answer to.

Everyone has the ability to have these superpowers:

  • Never Give Up
  • Always Tell The Truth
  • To Thine Own Self Be True

Okay, I got the last bullet point from Gilligan’s Island.  Really.  There was an episode where they did a musical version of Hamlet, which was my first encounter with the Bard.

There was an earthquake during the production.  It was quite the Shakesperience.

But the biggest sin of all is this one:  giving up.

The Boy texted me that Fox News® has lost over 50% of their web traffic since the election.  That sounds like despair.  And despair is giving up.

Me?

I’m not done.  Why should I be?  The one thing I could do to betray myself, and to betray everything I believe in?  Is to give up.  That would be giving up on me, and giving up on you.

I can’t abide by that.

Corporate powers may try to silence me, and may temporarily lower my traffic.

That won’t stop the signal.

And if I fall?  A dozen others will take my place.  Truth will win.  It may make a thousand years, and billions of lives, but Truth will win.

Does gravity care if you believe in it?  It does not.  Neither does the Truth.

Which is why I won’t give up.  And which is why the Truth will always win.

If The Market Is Being Gamed, Why Not Cheat?

“Well, if you could cheat for $84, you could cheat for $800.” – Green Acres

I had a scam caller the other day threatening to put me in jail for tax fraud.  Heck, I don’t even pay taxes.

First, I’m not a financial advisor, so please consider this commentary by an Internet humorist entertainment – you shouldn’t trust me since I lost $75 betting that Oprah would eat weight watchers in 2008.  Not the food from the company Weight Watchers®, but actual people who were watching their weight.

I’m willing to bet that the people who give tips to sitting Congressmen aren’t, financial advisors, either.  They’re insiders.  Sure, a law was passed in 2012 that was supposed to ban insider trading.  But Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina dumped $1.7 million in travel stocks (in 33 transactions) on February 13, 2020.

I like Mongolian poetry, but it has prose and Khans.

You know, in February.  When he was getting classified Corona briefings where the CIA admitted that they’d have to overthrow the United States government instead of the Russians because of the planned travel restrictions.

But Senator Burr got those briefings before travel stocks tanked.

If it was me who sold that stock right then, you can be sure that the Feds would wonder where I got the psychic ability to make trades.  After all, the Feds put Martha Stewart in the slam after they investigated her for insider trading.  (Yes, I know that Martha went down for lying to the Feds and not insider trading, but that just generally results in an additional term in Congress for most people.)

But not Senator Burr.  Nope.  The FBI investigated him, and the Department of Justice concluded that what he did was just awesome sauce, and awarded him six more terms in the Senate.

I met a baker that was a natural at stock trading – buy dough, sell pie.

The financial performance of sitting Congressvermin is amazing:

  • Representative Collin Peterson, Minnesota, started in 2008 with $123,500. In April of 2020?  He was worth $4.2 million.
  • Representative Judy Chu, California, was worth less than $100,000 in 2008. By April of 2020?  She was worth $7.1 million.
  • Senator Roy Blunt, Missouri, went from $602,000 to $7.1 million in the same time span.

How did these people do that?

I’m sure it was careful investing and not at all sweetheart deals that aren’t available only to powerful members of Congress.  I mean, it makes sense that Barack Obama entered the White House worth $1.3 million and today is worth somewhere between $70 million and $140 million.

Biden is busy in the White House – he spends most of the day watering his hair.

Where did he make that money?  Books.  Public speaking fees.  Netflix® opening up a truck and shoveling money down his mouth.  Certainly, none of this sounds like a payoff, does it?

But every Senator and Representative can’t be shoveled money like that.  I’m betting that in many cases, the payoff is just a tip here and a tip there.  That’s not protected, but remember that Congressparasites can just decide to not pay their taxes and not suffer any significant consequences.

There is, however, an idea that I’m thinking of doing.  I haven’t done it yet, but at some point (maybe next week?) I was going to start checking out trading ideas from here (LINK) or here (LINK).

They had to bribe my brother to be good when he was a kid.  Me?  I was good for nothing.

Yup.  People are now making it easy to track the trades of the people getting paid off in Congress.  Are all of the trades going to be winners?  Of course not.  But the stock purchases by Congressrats outperform the market by between 6% and 10% per year.

Maybe the Congressswine are just picking stocks that are already doing well and jumping on the bandwagon?

No.

The stocks that senators bought had zero abnormal performance before the senators bought them.  After a year?  Those same stocks had abnormal positive returns of 25%.  This is a rock star level of performance – put any of these people at a hedge fund and they’d be billionaires in less than a decade.

This is not chance.

They’re cheating.

Does it matter how they’re cheating?

When Warren stopped running for president, it was the second race she left that year.

Probably not.  As long as they consistently do it, though, who cares?  There does seem to be a skew to it – Senators in their first term seem to do the very best.  Perhaps that’s when they take the ticket and sell out their principles for high returns so they can be blackmailed later?

Nah.  That’s silly, right?

Regardless, although you and I can’t get book deals and have people sell us real estate for ludicrously low prices, I’m going to check to see if I can’t cheat like the pros.

The Latest Podcast Is Up – Watch It Because You Need A Good Laugh.

Mulder: Historically, cemeteries were thought to be a haven for vampires, as are castles, catacombs and swamps, but unfortunately, you don’t have any of those.
Sheriff:  We used to have swamps, only the EPA made us take to calling ’em wetlands.

–The X-Files

Okay, we did a very special episode, but this one we just did X-Files inspired stories – stuff off the beaten path.

The wait is over! The latest episode of Bombs and Bants is up!  Watch it because you like cheesy animation.  Watch it because our sponsor has me doing the best Humphrey Bogart imitation since his Mom mocked his voice when he wanted to stay home from school one day.

Watch it for the XXL Files.

The stories?  Vampires.  Portals in time.  And all the jokes you know and love.

Also?  The Mrs. is releasing some of the most beloved commercials in the universe – just wander over to the YouTube page and you can see gems like:

 

I had promised that I’d post a link when The Boy got Bombs and Bants up on other formats, and here it is (Bombs And Bants) for Bitchute, Apple podcasts, and Odysee.

The Biggest Lie Of The Left: Guns

“It’s ridiculous. Invisible? Whoever heard of anyone being invisible? Unless, of course, you have the ring of power.” – Soap

I told Pugsley the other day to sign my name for a note for school.  At least he’ll be in practice.

I once heard some psychologist (I think it was a psychologist, it was a very long time ago) on a television show say:  “Children are naturally truthful.”

With that one statement, I knew that the psychologist had no children.  As a child, I was a horrible liar.  My lies were horrible in every sense of the word.  I told lies that couldn’t possibly be true based on laws of physics that even I knew at my age.  And I told them in ways that weren’t convincing even to casual observers.  As a parent?  Oh, my, I assumed anything any of my kids told me before the age of ten was a lie.

I do recall telling one other little kid that I could turn invisible – I think I was five.

Why?  I have no idea.  But if you tell someone that you can turn invisible, eventually they’re gonna want to see some sort of proof, even if they’re five.

Now, however, our politicians and media are teaming up to tell a lie that’s just as stupid as my “I can turn invisible” lie.  That lie is this:

Mass shooters with AR-15 weapons are a national problem.

Well, no, they’re not.  At all.

Last year, about 364 people in the United States were killed with “long guns” – rifles.  More people have died from vaccinations than have died from AR-15 style weapons this year.  More people died falling out of bed (450) and over 2,500 left-handed folks die using right-handed items incorrectly.

People who are left-handed score higher on standardized tests than people who died as infants.

Yes.  More people die from being left-handed than from the dreaded “assault” weapon.

The odd obsession of the Left (not the left-handed) to take assault weapons, in particular, has long fascinated me.  Here is a gun that is provably twenty times safer than doctors with bad handwriting scrawling out prescriptions in what appears (to me) to be some sort of script that only a retarded (yes, I’m taking it back) chimpanzee with shakes from palsy could produce.

Honestly, for a device produced to expel a projectile at around 3,000 feet per second, the AR-15 is about the safest invention ever.  It’s like the ten million or so AR-15 shoot Nerf® darts if they only manage to kill 364 people a year.  So what’s the deal?

Let’s dissect the idea:  what really scares the Left about guns?

  • First, most gun deaths are Leftists shooting other Leftists.

Washington, D.C., had 920 people shot last year.  95% of the people in Washington, D.C. are Leftists.  People shooting each other isn’t a problem for the people on the Right, it’s just Leftists shooting each other.  People on the Left don’t understand why people on the Right aren’t upset.

Well, it’s because we’re not killing people and we’re not being killed.  Duh.

In fact, if you took lawful gun owners on the Right and their homicide rate (using guns) it would be among the lowest in the world for any country, including those that ban guns outright.  The gun homicide rate of people on the Right is similar to people on Mars, and Elon Musk hasn’t killed anyone recently.

People on the Right don’t shoot each other.  Generally, the only time people on the Right shoot people on the Left is when the people on the Left are trying to kill people on the Right.  Sure, you can come up with a few oddball examples where somebody on the Right shoots someone, but they are really the “man bites dog” stories because they are so unusual.

People on the Left killing each other?  That’s what you call “Friday” in Chicago.

What did the German say when he went into the French bread store?  “Gluten tag!”

So, when the latest shooter (FedEx shooter in Indianapolis) showed up, the Left pounced.  It was and is the man bites dog story that they’ll use to prove their lie.

To prove the point:  the Left was ecstatic when the Boulder killer showed up.  They were even more thrilled when it appeared that he had an AR-15.  Then reality hit.  When the killer proved to be an “intersectional” member of two of the Left’s worshipped classes – an immigrant and a Muslim, the Left was quite sad.

How to get out of their lie?   Blame it all on unfounded claims of “white supremacy” for the killing of nine white people.  If that’s white supremacy, the guy, just maybe, is doing it wrong.  Now if the goal was to kill white people in Boulder, well, he got that part just right.

NPR® had a lovely story:  “Why Boulder Is Trying To Keep The Focus On The Victims And Not The Shooter.”  See, if it’s a Muslim, they can’t even call him what he is – a killer.  This was all so that the story could be properly memory-holed.  It was the story they were looking for, but just the wrong killer.

Betcha $5 that NPR™ doesn’t run a similar story about Indianapolis.

Now, after half a dozen fizzled attempts to get the narrative they were looking for (someone who wasn’t a Leftist shooting other Leftists), they found it.

  • Second, individuals with guns scare Leftists, because Leftists love the State.

Leftists love statist solutions.  To them, the State is power.  It’s power for their ideas.  Leftists don’t see a world where they can go and create and change things they don’t like.  Nope.  Leftists see a world where the State has to exist to right all of the wrongs that have been done to them.

Go and create a business that serves thousands or millions of people?  Or wait for the State to forcibly take money from other people to give to you as reparations for a crime that occurred decades or even hundreds of years in the past?

Are the hieroglyphs in the pyramid hard to read because they’re encrypted?

The second one seems ever so much more fun.

But people forget that the Second Amendment was specifically written to prevent tyranny that the People wouldn’t put up with.  An armed populace are citizens.  An unarmed populace are subjects.  A stoned populace are Oregonians.

Leftists want subjects, not citizens.  Leftist want masses who vote for collectivist politicians so they can take power, and never let it go.

People on the Right?  Mainly they just want to be left alone.

  • Finally, Leftists politicians are scared because armed citizens limit what they can do.

January 6, 2021 was quite a surprise:  a group of people petitioned their government for redress.  Was there violence?  Yes.  Was it less than nearly any of the 2020 Some Black Lives Matter protest?  Certainly.  Damage was minimal.  The only death due to violence was one girl in a red hat who was shot by a cop.

That wasn’t the damage.

The damage was to the minds of the elite.  They realized that, as I’ve said before, the governance of an armed nation requires the consent of the governed.

Prior to this, the biggest fear of Congress was chlamydia.

I’ll take a second to make an aside.  People keep talking about “majority rule” as if there is some sort of magical win that comes from 50% plus one vote.  Let me ask a fairly simple question:  if a law or rule is so repugnant that 20% of the country finds it intolerable, is that a good law?

Probably not.

Here, however, the elite have figured out Wilder’s Law:  20% of the people, if armed, can stop 100% of the laws, if they are committed enough.  And it scares the elite to death.  An armed populace always scares tyrants.

My prediction is fairly simple:  Americans will continue to own guns.  Lots of them.  Legally or not.

The Left lies like a group of five-year-olds.  They say that “assault weapons” are a problem.

They’re not.  Provably not.  The left is lying.

Okay, if I really was invisible for a day?  I’d kick a mime nearly to death.

Children are not naturally truthful.  And neither is the Left.  And the Left is certainly not invisible, even when they try to convince you they are.

Welcome To Being An Outsider

“Now, I didn’t start it, but be sure as Hell I mean to see it through.” – Shooter

If you boil a clown you get laughing stock.

We’re Outsiders.

Well, not all of us.  But when you look at the system, most of the people reading this post are Outsiders.

I happen to live in a place filled with Outsiders.  Here in Modern Mayberry, you’re ten a hundred times as likely to see a Gadsden flag on a flagpole as a Bernie® bumper sticker.  Besides the Bernie supporters around here have now all been kicked out by their roommates, you know, “Mom and Dad”.

That’s why it’s Modern Mayberry.

It’s not paradise.  There are some thefts.  There are some drugs of the most destructive kind.  There’s even a hipster who was an outdoorsman before it was cool – you’d call him a homeless guy.

But yet . . .

People here still remember the United States that was, or at least the United States we remembered from our dreams.  One where the Constitution was the rule.  One where the dream wasn’t one of dependence on handouts.  One where you could ignore it when the government called you at home – you could let freedom ring.

A friend of mine used his stimulus check to buy baby chickens.  Money for nothing and the chicks for free.

Tonight I drove home along Main Street, and I saw people out and about.  In one block I saw six people that I personally knew, and most of them made it off the sidewalk in time.

Yet all of us in Modern Mayberry are really Outsiders, and I think that we know that.  And I think we cherish it, just like the EpiPen® my friend gave me as he was dying – I know I’ll always cherish it.

I watch the news stories of places that seem alien to me.  I know that California in 1980 was overwhelmingly what we now call a Red state.  Now?  It’s alien even to many that were born there.

The politics that created what would have been one of the most prosperous nations in the world have given way to politics that has made California one of the most impoverished states in the United States.  I know Gavin Newsom tried to fight poverty, but he kept losing.  Homeless people can be deceptively strong when you try to wrestle them.

Sure, I’d love to have California back.  I’d love to have Disneyland® back and the American Dream Vacation™, too, with bonus points for stops at the Grand Canyon and Uncle Eddie’s place.  But the beliefs that I believe most readers here have aren’t shared by most voters in California in 2021.

There was a person who saw the California ban coming:  No-Straw-Domus.

I don’t blame the native Californians – they voted against this insanity again and again, but were overruled from activist benches.  We know what sort of trash is on the benches, but what is on the table for the United States?

  • Individual Rights – these are being replaced by group rights. Reparations for crimes committed nearly two hundred years ago?  By the descendants of people who moved here from Germany in 1880?
  • Freedom of Choice – this is being replaced by coercion, explicit and implicit. Want to do business?  You can have whatever opinion you want – as long as it’s the right one.
  • Due Process – this is being replaced by guilt by inference. Red flag laws, anyone?
  • Right to Keep and Bear Arms – this is being replaced by the right of approved people to potentially be allowed to purchase a limited number of weapons and keep them locked in a safe at home. As long as we know the weapons are kitten-safe.

Propaganda for collectivism has long been in the offing.  For all of my life the programming has been in place to change attitudes to accept this – Leftists have monopolized the major networks since I was a kid.  Society has changed in ways that promote collectivism.  People move from location to location or live in monolithic cities or sterile suburbs that actively discourage people from acting together in the spirit of real community.

What is it replaced with?  City governments.  Homeowners’ Associations. Neither of those build community – those are, in larger cities, the expression of power and control.  The Mayor of Chicago holds more power than governors of many states.  That’s not any semblance of community – when is the last time you heard of anyone holding up Chicago for the face of election fairness?

What part of the mayor of Chicago weighs the most?  The scales.

That’s the downside.  But it gets better from here.

The first part of winning as an Outsider comes from knowing that you are an Outsider.  There is power in being an outsider – it only took a dozen Outsiders to eventually change the entire Roman Empire from people who worshiped Funko Pop® figurines to Christians.  Well, a dozen people and a few years.

Ideas are powerful.

Likewise, Outsiders are powerful.  Once a person realizes that they’re an Outsider, entire routes open to them.  This is a special type of freedom:

  • Freedom from the system. The system was built not to reward me, but to keep me in line, to keep me fearful.  To keep me compliant.  Recognizing that is everything.
  • Freedom from caring about the opinions of the world. Do I care about what France thinks about me?  Do I care about what Google® thinks about me?  Most (not all, but most) of the people whose opinions matter to me know it, and they all have excellent posture and dental hygiene.
  • Freedom to set my own goals. What is it that I value?  What is it that I want to accomplish?  This is mine, and mine alone.  Oh, wait, except for trash day.  I have to remember trash day.
  • Freedom to not apologize. When I make a mistake and I agree I’ve made a mistake, I own up to it, proudly.  When I don’t, I don’t apologize.  And I won’t.  Especially not for the bad jokes.
  • Freedom to change the world. And I will.  I’m going to keep going so I can inject my ideas so deeply into the Outsider psyche that the mRNA shot from Pfizer® will seem like a non-invasive procedure.

Kamala Harris is very concerned about COVID.  She heard that super-spreaders were the problem.

One piece of the puzzle, interestingly enough, came to me from crappy Star Wars® movie, The Force Awakens™.  The movie was horrible.  One thing that I couldn’t figure out was why, after killing the Emperor®, that the Rebels™ were . . . the Resistance©?

The movie was awful, partially because it was poorly written and choked with social justice.  But it revealed the mind of the Left in ways that I hadn’t realized before:

  • The Left wanted to identify with the Resistance© because they rely on powerlessness. Powerlessness is necessary to recruit Leftists – the core of Leftism is self-hate.
  • The Left is about power, but it refuses to admit it has it. That’s why Leftist professors from Leftist colleges complain about insufficient Leftism from Leftist politicians and Leftist media.  And vice versa – it becomes self-reinforcing.

Leftists rely on powerlessness as a route to power.  It is their foundational myth; it is their unifying element.  They are downtrodden, even as they control every major corporation.  They are disenfranchised, even though they control nearly every major media outlet – if there’s a cure for that, it’s unTweetable.

Twitter® is like a Leftist bank account – after you enter the wrong opinion five times, you’re locked out.

Given all of that, why am I so happy?

Because I’m free.  I’m free of my illusions.  I’m free to be an Outsider.

I’ll enjoy seeing the Gadsden flag tomorrow.  After all, there were another group of Outsiders a few years ago who seemed to like that flag.

And you remember where the Gadsden flag first flew?

On a pole.

Welcome To The Exponential, Including One Bikini Graph

“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?” – No Country For Old Men

When I went to Ireland I met some shy people, which surprised me.  No one expects the Irish inhibition.

I had noticed it some time ago a strange mathematical relationship – the National Debt (sort of) doubles about every eight years.  Is it an exact mathematical relationship?  Nope.  It varies a bit based on which eight years that you pick.  But the relationship is simple – the national debt is growing faster than yeast in AOC’s armpits, at about 9% per year.

It wasn’t always like that.

I also looked at the national debt between World War II and 1970 or so.  During that time period, the national debt was as flat as Joe Biden’s brain activity scan.  Hmm, whatever could have happened around 1970?

You’ll be happy to know that my search for “Richard Nixon bikini” came up empty.

The reason for most of our problems is that understanding the idea of exponential growth is difficult.  Our minds are (mostly) made for understanding linear things, or things that happen slowly.  No one really expects that, no matter how badly they eat, that they’d double in weight overnight, or even over the course of a month or year.

Yet, a lot of natural processes do follow exponentials, at least for a limited amount of time.  Take a baby.  Please.  I really have no use for them anymore.  Even the thought of a baby makes me exhausted.

Babies start with one cell, then two, then four, and then eight, and so on.  The initial growth of a child is exponential.  Thankfully, that levels off, or else there would be no way that I’d be able to afford to feed Pugsley.  If that exponential growth rate had continued, he’d be the size of the Solar System and need to eat cheeseburgers the size of Saturn just to make it to lunch.

Want fries with that Saturn?

No.  He’ll settle for the rings.

So, exponentials can’t continue on forever.  Math proves that.  If exponentials could continue forever, by the year 2032, the only blog left on the Internet would be this one, and everyone on Earth would have to spend 18 hours a day reading it.

Ahhh, I can dream.

But our national debt is following that trend.  Here’s a graph I put together:

Actual conversation with The Mrs.:  I said, “I promise I can make this [economic idea] interesting.”  The Mrs. responded, “Bikini graphs aren’t interesting to me.”

One of the lines is the actual national debt.  It’s the red one.  I just picked actual national debt data every eight years going into the past from today.  The other one?  I extrapolated back into the past from today: I just assumed that the national debt doubled every eight years.

How accurate was I?

In 1973 the actual national debt was $466 billion.  My backwards approximation?  $438 billion.  Close enough that a snake that was 3.14 feet long could be called a πthon.

Sure, in the middle, sometimes I was higher, sometimes lower.  But in general, I stuck the landing.

That means that in 2029 (if the United States is made of math) that we’ll be seeing a national debt of $56 trillion.  And in 2037?  $112 trillion.  Jeff Bezos sometimes works a whole year and doesn’t make that much money.

I heard he didn’t want to be CEO or president, just Prime® minister.

Does it make sense to anyone that the world will still keep accepting a doubling of debt every eight years and still keep sending us oil and steel and copper for the dollars that we print?  Sure, it worked for a long time.  Having an unmatched military and all the nukes gives a lot of room to dictate terms.

But how many people remember back to 1980 when the winner of the Cold War was in doubt?  The United States couldn’t print all of the dollars it wanted to without inflation.  The rule that the dollar followed changed, though, when the Soviet Union decided that it wanted to retire and spend the rest of eternity in Boca Raton in a retirement community gumming applesauce.

After that, the United States printing press could go wild.  Inflation?  Well, why bother with that?  The United States could print all the money it wanted and ship it overseas.  What else were people going to want?  Rubles?  Marks?  Rupees?

No.  The way that international trade was done was with the dollar.  We could print them up, and the world would soak them up and then the inflation could be exported all over the world, since the demand for dollars was now the entire world.  The United States could, in essence, tax the entire world to allow them to use the good old dollar.

I heard my chiropractor owes back taxes.

It was a good ride.  Need oil?  Print a few billion and send it to the Saudis.  Need copper?  Print a few million and send it to Chile.  Need cars?  Print a few billion and send it to Japan.

There are good things that happen when you win it all.  You get a trophy.  You get a party.  You get oil and copper and cars.  But if you have too much fun at the party?

There’s always the hangover.

Exponential growth can continue, and it can continue for quite a long time.  Without it, life itself wouldn’t be possible.  But life proves, again and again, that there is only so far that growth can go.

But, hey, it’s different this time, right?  The national debt can go on forever, right?

Equality: The god That Failed

“I’m sorry, Lisa, but giving everyone an equal part when they’re clearly not equal, is called what, class?” – The Simpsons

The kids said they wanted a cat for Christmas.  Normally we have ham, but I’m willing to give it a try.

In the early 2000’s I first came across the word, “meme” – and at that point, it didn’t mean just a funny picture of chubby cats lusting after cheeseburgers.  The original definition that I saw talked about a meme being an “idea fragment” that would travel virally through the consciousness of a group.  Essentially memes have a life based on transmitting themselves from mind to mind.

Examples of these simple mind viruses are all around us – we’ve been soaking in them since we were little.  We don’t notice them so much because they are a part of our culture.  What are some example memes out of the tens of thousands we’ve been exposed to?

  • Majority Rules
  • One Man, One Vote
  • One Nation, Indivisible
  • All Men Are Created Equal
  • Wilder Is The Funniest Living Human Political Writer

Each of those (except the last one, of course) is demonstrably false.

The majority only rules when the vote is counted fairly, and there have been plenty of minority rule situations because the majority didn’t have guns.  I’d say that the history of the world is the history of the majority not ruling.

One man, one vote?  Obviously, the creator of this idea had never been to Chicago, Milwaukie, Detroit, or Atlanta.  Most of those cities make the old Soviet Union look like Utah.

One nation, indivisible?  1860 proved that wasn’t the case.  Did it get undivisibled?  Well, yeah, but I’ve met plenty of people who are still sore about the War of Northern Aggression.  Sadly, all of them think that iced tea should have sugar in it.

OSHA inspectors only drink safe tea.

All Men Are Created Equal, though, is the meme that I wanted to write about in this post.  I know that what Jefferson and the committee were going for was that all people should have equal Natural Rights, and it probably tested well in focus groups.

And, I agree with the idea that all people should have the same rights, but even that is trivially shown to be false:  ask the people from three of the nations that have never visited this blog (North Korea, Cuba, and Iran) if that’s the case.  It’s also folly for Americans to fight to give those rights to other people around the world:  you don’t value anything that you don’t fight for yourself.

“All Men Are Created Equal” is a nice phrase, but believing it has caused more difficulty than any other meme for the people of the United States.  Why?

A conclusion this meme leads to is this:  if all people are equal, all groups are equal.  Again, all individuals should have the same rights, but why on Earth would we anticipate that all groups have equal abilities?  For example, the aboriginal peoples of Australia had been separated from the rest of humanity for 50,000 years.  Why would we expect them to have the same abilities as the Japanese?  Why would we expect that Native Americans would have the same abilities as Conquistadors from Spain since there were at least 30,000 years where they had nothing to do with each other?

Keep in mind, folks, it took less than a third of that time to make miniature poodles out of wolves.

How do you call a wolf with Stockholm Syndrome?  “Here, puppy dog!”

To be utterly clear:  I am not making the case that any particular group is better than another group.  There are people from every group on the planet that are nicer and better people than I am.  But why wouldn’t we expect them to be very different peoples?  I am personally so maladapted to life in the Outback that I would probably burst into flame and turn into a pile of dehydrated ash on day one.

But when I got off the airplane in Fairbanks at -30°F (-7m3), I have never felt more at home.  There was, for me, something inherently right about the taiga and the long dark nights that sang to my soul.  It resonated with me.  I wonder if having ancestors that were adapted to long, dark, cold winters had anything to do with that?

What did Vikings call English villages?  Chopping centers.

A second conclusion this meme leads to is:  if all people are equal, women are equal to men.

Well, they’re not.  In college, one of my friends was on the swim team.  He told me that pretty much every member of the men’s swim team could beat every world record held by women.  Every one.

But wade just a minute – our swim team was not good.  But yet, every one of them was better than the best woman swimmer that ever lived.  Yet, not a single member of the dude swim team could have a baby.

That is not equal, at all.

Men and women are different, have different skills, and have different abilities.  They are not, and never can be equal.  The difficulty that this leads to is that standards have been lowered so women can do physical things like “firefighter” or “soldier” without the concept that they simply cannot perform as well as a male.  But when it comes to “making babies” and “getting me a sammich” they knock it out of the park.

If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do they all have to drown?

The most common refrain is that “Well, the standards were too high to begin with.”  If the first defense is that we should have weaker and slower firefighters and soldiers to prove a political point, I’d assume that whoever made that argument wasn’t interested in saving lives or defending our nation.

“All men are created equal” also leads to a third conclusion:  if all people are equal, then all cultures must be equal.  Well, no, they aren’t.  At all.  Many cultures have produced wonderful things, yet in 2021 have utterly failed to produce first-world living standards for their people.

Hollywood® has done a wonderful job of marketing the ideas that:

  • The United States doesn’t have a culture.
  • Other cultures are heckin’ cute and valid.
  • Cultures in close contact and overlap don’t create any conflict.
  • Colonialism created conflict by drawing borders that put overlapping cultures in close contact.

Careful readers will note that points three and four just might contradict each other.

To dissect that the United States doesn’t (or didn’t) have a culture, well, fish really don’t know that they’re swimming in water.  When I look at the leader of China wearing a suit and tie that could have been tailored in New York or London, well, I realize that European culture is so very ubiquitous that cultures all over the planet have appropriated it.

That’s what Xi said.

That’s okay.  But it’s not okay to say that the United States doesn’t have a culture.

Are other cultures heckin’ cute and valid?  Sure.  But don’t assume that every culture produces the same results.  Does South American culture produce the same level of material prosperity?  No.

Can it produce happiness?  Sure.  I was in Santiago, Chile a while back.  The people there were happy, and were making out on a warm afternoon in the broad plaza that led to some large government building.  When I went out that night with some locals, the beer was cold, the dinner was wonderful, and everyone I saw was happy and safe.

Different.  Not equal.

I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to think of examples where overlapping cultures cause conflicts.  No fair in picking Canada where the English and French overlap, and after one huge argument in the comment section a while back, you can bet I’m not going to mention Ireland.

Oops, too late.

Again, I’m not saying that “not equal” means inferior.  It means not equal.  It means different.

But to have the idea that all men are created equal?  That’s the insanity.

Funny Movie Friday: Because I Said So

“I am taking comedy to the next level:  the extermination of all biological life on earth.” – South Park

How do you break up a fistfight between two blind guys?  Say:  “I’m rooting for the one with the knife.”

We’ve been doing serious stuff for a while, so I thought, on a beautiful spring day like today, it’s a perfect time to have class outside and relax.  Don’t worry – you won’t be graded on this one.  Probably.

I like comedy movies, which probably surprises zero readers.  Recently, comedies haven’t been all that funny, because to be funny, generally someone is made fun of.  That, in a serious world, is not allowed.  I believe it is a fact that it was easier to get sent to the Gulag in Soviet Russia over a your-momma joke than it was by actually spying for the capitalist pigs.

Authority can allow many things, but it cannot abide being ridiculed, even gently.  That’s why Saturday Night Live® mocked Trump mercilessly, but can’t poke fun at the most buffoonish Oval-Office-Occupant since Bill Clinton was mocked about cigars and a blue dress.

The last thing Bill said to Jeff Epstein?  “Hang in there!”

But movies endure.  They provide a picture in time of a reality and culture of the past.  Comedies are in short supply, too.  I even ran the numbers a while back that proved just that, but it’s late and I got home late so you’ll just have to trust me:  they really don’t make ‘em like they used to.

One thing about a great comedy:  when it really catches a moment, it is memorable.  We quote it again and again.  The best movies are like that.  So, in no particular order, here are some of the movies that I chose that represent the best of comedy.  Note that while I might have multiple movies from the same “creative source” that I love, I only picked one of their movies.

Except when I didn’t.

Here’s the top 15.  Why 15?  Because I said so.

One note:  as I said, the list is in no particular order – each of these is a classic in its own way, and why do I have to choose or rank between masterpieces?

A Night at the Opera – Some might like Duck Soup.  Some might like Animal Crackers.  For my fifth grade teachers, this was their particular nightmare:  a blonde hunched over five-foot tall fifth grader walking back and forth, pretending to smoke a cigar, and talking about why no one believes in a Sanity Clause.  No rooms?  Send up a hall.  This is my kind of Marxism.

Time flies like an arrow.  Fruit flies like a banana.

Better Off Dead – John Cusack blocked me on Twitter® after he said some inane Leftist thing and I responded.  I don’t take it personally.  But Cusack starred in (my opinion) the best teen comedy ever. Savage Steve Holland (the person really responsible for the film) should have done so much more.  Now, where are my two dollars?

Baseketball – South Park was still new (and good) when this movie came out.  I’m (sort of) cheating on my own rule because this has Zucker involvement (see below) but this movie was a Trey and Matt movie at its core.  It’s hilarious and never gets old.  “Pretzel?  Made it myself.  Goes great with mustard.”

Big Trouble in Little China – John Carpenter and Kurt Russell in a list of the best comedies of all time?  Yeah.  This movie has everything.  Magic.  Trucks.  Cheesy special effects.  Great heroes.  Evil villains.  How did they get the comedic timing down so perfectly?  “It’s all in the reflexes.”

Galaxy Quest – This is the best Star Trek® movie since Shatner . . . played . . . the . . . part.  Period.

Monty Python and The Holy Grail – I first saw this movie, uncut, on PBS® on an 11” black and white television.  I was hooked.  This was my first exposure to Monty Python and made me realize that there were jokes that I couldn’t explain to anyone because they just wouldn’t get it.  That did hurt me, deep inside, but ‘tis but a flesh wound.

What did the actors eat while filming Monty Python movies?  Grail mix.

Ghostbusters – If Bill Murray had a greatest moment, this was it.  Some would say that his best movie was Groundhog Day, but I disagree.  This was the man at his absolute mastery of timing, wit, and charm.  But if you don’t like this list?  You only have 75 more to go.

Airplane! – It was rare to get Pa Wilder to go to a movie.  First, Ma had to drag him away from the woodpile.  Second, we had to drive two hours (I’m not making this up) to a picture show that he would go to (there were closer movie theaters, but Pa Wilder never went to them).  We went to see Airplane! one hot summer day.  I never saw Pa laugh louder or longer.  He loved every second, surely.  But don’t call him Shirley.

Office Space – Mike Judge convinced someone from a corporation to give him money to make a movie that utterly skewered the slow, meaningless death that is corporate life.  This movie made me want to stop going to work.  The Mrs.:  “Are you quitting?”  Me:  “No, I just don’t think I’m going anymore.”

Get out of that car.  Right meow.

Super Troopers – Broken Lizard® is the comedy group that produced this and their other movies, including that wonderful film, Beerfest.  But Super Troopers?  I have no idea what I expected, but I wasn’t expecting a chugging contest with bottles of maple syrup.  Pardon me, I have to go find a liter of cola.

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure – I rented this movie from the VHS bin at the supermarket because I had no idea what it was, but it was only a buck.  Is it stupid?  Yes.  Is it funny?  Also yes.  It’s a teen comedy without anything but two idiots with a time machine.  Most triumphant!

Raising Arizona – Again, a rental.  Why did I pick it?  It was late on a Friday.  It was in stock.  Who was this Nic Cage guy?  The writing was crisp, the action scenes funny, and I had no idea how or where it would end.  Maybe it was Utah?

UHF – Of course I knew who Weird Al was.  Of course I knew this would be a movie as stupid as making a hot dog with a Twinkie® as a bun.  And I was right.  But this movie?  It’s drinking from the firehose.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High – There was never a movie that was more 1980’s about 1980’s teens.  The worst part of this movie was that it got Sean Penn’s movie career started.  The best part of this movie is that it convinced the world that Sean Penn was an idiot.  Have any problems with the plot?  Don’t worry.  My old man he’s got this ultimate set of tools.  I can fix it.

I tried to sew together small dogs and cattle.  It was a terrier bull idea.

Young Frankenstein – This was Mel’s best movie.  The Mrs. prefers Spaceballs, but, of course, she’s wrong.  Never has a movie so lovingly captured an entire era of film, and then had so much fun with it.    You could say he had a roll, roll, roll in ze hay . . .

As I look at this list, I noticed that the most recent movie on this list is Super Troopers, in 2001.  That’s two decades ago.  Sure, there have been some comedies that I’ve enjoyed since then, but none of them have been as, well, funny.  Anchorman was nearly a pick, but didn’t quite make my cut.  I’d rather re-watch any of the movies above than Anchorman again.

So, what did I miss?  What are your favorites?

Human Action Part II: A Tool Kit

“By Grabthar’s hammer, we live to tell the tale!” – Galaxy Quest

Three years ago my doctor told me I was losing my hearing.  I haven’t heard from him since.

Last week I touched base on Ludwig von Mises’ theory of human action that he wrote about in his book Human Action while probably not getting a lot of action.  I mean, he was writing all the time.

The basics of Ludwig’s theory are pretty simple.  I’ll give a quick recap of the three requirements to human action.  There’s much more at last week’s post (A Brief Guide To Human Action – Which Leads To Human Freedom):

A Vision Of A Better State:  Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise® is the basis for rebuilding society after the collapse.

A Path To Get To A Better State:  Writing more.  Finally getting around to starting that cult – Wilderology©:  The Post-Apocalyptic Cult, With a Difference!™

A Belief That Action Will Really Lead To A Better State:  Elon Musk finally answered my voice mails!  Okay, it was a cease and desist letter from his attorney, but it’s a start.

Again, these requirements of Vision, Path, and Belief can show up in any order – although the example above starts with a Vision, that’s not required.  Most often, I’ve seen that’s the catalyst for action – a Vision – but sometimes it’s nothing more than a person with a talent and free time eventually coming across a Vision by accident.

This is the only way to explain ¡Jeb!

Jeb was a pallbearer at his dad’s funeral, so he could let him down one last time.

If the three elements of Vision, Path and Belief are there, action is nearly inevitable.  If even one is missing, action rarely happens.

One of the lines in the post seemed like a throwaway, but it was really a setup for this post.  Whereas that last post ended up pointing out that we as a nation are governed only by our consent, this post is a bit more practical – a tool kit – in solving problems when dealing with people.

The other tool kit, I mean.  Sure you can always get more cooperation with a .45 and a kind word than with just the kind word, but sometimes The Mrs. thinks the Glock® is a bit much when trying to convince Pugsley to take out the trash.

I put glue on my Glocks®.  I’m sticking to my guns.

The basis of this toolkit is simple.  If all three elements of human action exist, human action should follow.  Missing an element?  Just like von Mises while he was writing his book, no action.

Let’s break it down a little further when dealing with actual people:

Vision is vision.  However, if a Vision isn’t shared, people won’t be going in the same direction.  For instance, if my Vision of a clean bathroom looks like miles of gleaming chrome and sparkling porcelain where I would be proud to eat moist scrambled eggs off of any surface, that’s wonderful.

But if Pugsley’s Vision of a clean bathroom looks like a petri dish left in the steaming jungles of the Amazon during plague week and it’s okay the toilet is flushed on alternate Wednesdays (except during Lent) he and I may have the seeds for a conflict.

How do I fix that?  First, I have to communicate my Vision to him.  That may involve choking and yelling.  Choking for emphasis, and yelling because I want him to know why I’m choking him.  Then he knows the Vision is important to me.

Just kidding.  Normally, I’ll clean an area.  I point out that, “This is what I want.”  The primal part in his teenager brain not devoted to Chicken McNuggets®, driving, girls, and sleep then dimly understood my point.  He may not share my Vision (more on that later) but he certainly knows what it is.

Next comes Path.  For me, acting alone to clean a bathroom, is simple:  grab the stuff and clean.  There’s nothing that a liberal application of flame, kerosene, and bleach can’t take care of.  Oh, yeah, don’t forget the acid.  Gotta clean that toilet bowl.  My motto when cleaning Pugsley’s bathroom?

“If it bleeds we can kill it.”

For millions of years, the most dangerous predator the world had ever known was T. Rex.  Now it’s J. Biden.

But why would I act alone to clean a bathroom?  The Mrs. calls me “Juan De La Gator” and I try to live up to that.  I wouldn’t clean a bathroom by myself because . . . I live with a teenager.  Honestly, I don’t feel I should clean Pugsley’s bathroom at all, because . . . it’s his bathroom.  One of my cardinal rules as a parent is to never do work around the house that a kid could do.

It’s called building character.  (snicker)

The next question I have to ask myself is does Pugsley have the ability to do good work – does he have the talent for it and the ability to focus?  Yes, he does.  Talent for cleaning a bathroom to standards slightly above the third world (or France, but I repeat myself) isn’t rare.

Does he have the focus to do it?  Certainly.  I’ve seen him work like a monster to loosen a bearing on the lawnmower deck to fix it himself.  And this week he’s spent several hours not fixing (yet) the garbage disposal – I’m thinking he’ll bring that home tomorrow.  So, he has focus.

What deodorant do prospectors choose?  They pick Axe®.

Ability (and talent) and focus are the Path.  If he’s missing one of them, the path is incomplete.  If you ask an Albanian mall lawyer to fix a copier, all you’ll get is an incomprehensible series of grunts, some drool, and a floor hip-deep in toner powder.  The extent of the Albanian mall lawyer’s ability is to poke at the copier (breaking small plastic parts in the process) and make grunting, vaguely simian noises.

But as bad as they are at copier repair, if you need a parking ticket fixed, you can’t beat an Albanian mall lawyer.  They’re as feisty and cunning as starving midgets in a cage fight over a pork loin while armed with claw hammers.  Never underestimate the power of a claw hammer – it can also be a bus pass or a coupon for a free dinner.

What about ownership?

When it comes to mowers and garbage disposals at our house – Pugsley “owns” those.  He decided to fix those, and my support has been mainly moral (“Did you want to see the assembly instructions before you try to fix it yourself, Columbus?”) and financial (“Yes, we can order a new seal since that one is ruined now”).  Let’s be real:  when people own the systems they’re working on, and own the results, they put a part of themselves into those systems.  The results matter to them.

Ownership matters.

If Pugsley owns the results, things get fixed.  The Mrs. bought him a new shower rod for his bathroom.  “Come here, Dad.  Hold this.”  I played Statue of Liberty if instead of Liberty she was really the Statue of Installing Shower Curtain Rods.  My job was a simple job.  He was done with me in fifteen seconds.

Lastly, there are incentives.

For me, the incentive is a clean bathroom.  If I do the minimal job as Dad, for Pugsley the incentive for him is doing just enough minimal work so I leave him alone.

Minimal equals minimal.  The real win is when his incentive isn’t to shut me up, but his incentive is to clean the bathroom because it’s important to him – and he gets to look at it and say to himself, “I did that.”

Not all math jokes are hard.  Just sum.

As a father, dealing with incentives is easy.  There’s always the last resort:  “Hand me your phone and your car keys.”  It’s the claw hammer of incentives – and one I don’t want to use.  It always works, but when I get to that point I know that I haven’t done my job of creating ownership, which internalizes incentives.

Going back to our model:  Ownership and incentives are the Belief, the final key.

So:

  • Vision=Vision (after it has been communicated and shared)
  • Path=Ability, Talent, and Focus
  • Belief=Ownership and Incentives

It’s not a perfect correlation, but it’s close.  When you look at something that’s not working when you’re dealing with people, think about this model.  Most often when there’s a problem that I’ve found it has been with either Incentives or Vision, but each of these can be broken.

Sure, Human Action is just a model but it’s an important tool, just like a hammer.  And to everyone who has a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

And for every problem?

There’s a cage match with claw hammers.

The New Episode Is Up: Watch It Because It’s Funnier A Biden Press Conference (Also: Readers Write!)

Beers Win More And More Games – Baseketball

The move to take over all of the media in the world continues – the latest episode of Bombs and Bants is up!  Watch it because you like cheesy animation.  Watch it because our sponsor is that PARODY dating service – PreppersOnly.com, and only here can you find 43 Seconds Inside The Head of AOC.

In this episode we talk about what the Pentagon thinks of aliens, the city versus rural divide, and we look at democide.

I had promised that I’d post a link when The Boy got Bombs and Bants up on other formats, and here it is (Bombs And Bants) for Bitchute, Apple podcasts, and Odysee.

Okay, Baseketball still makes me laugh.

Also, from reader/listener Tar, a wise update on unusual places to find things after society collapses:

“One thought re: those “obscure supply locations” that the article didn’t cover, but you may be interested in.

Public Pool facilities and pool supply shops.  They usually keep a bunch of chlorine on site at pools to keep the pool clean – that can be used to purify drinking water if you know what you’re doing with the concentrations.  Probably also bulk charcoal for water filtration, if not filter equipment and media.  Also, they always keep a medical kit on site, and some even have the packs to shock people in cardiac arrest.  Suppliers will often have all of the above.
Garden Centers can also be helpful  – they’ll have not just supplies for growing stuff (a bottle or two of rooting hormone will be helpful in multiplying food production if you have growing space) but they generally stock tools that can make good melee weapons in a pinch.  Pretty much anything sharp on a pole is superior to knives and such  – wood axes are unwieldy but forks and shovels are good.  Also, when the shooting starts, digging holes gets important.  Get picks and hand-cultivators in addition to shovels for such work.
Welding supply stores may be useful early on, especially if they have dry ice on stock (10 pounds of dry ice in the bottom of a cooler under a bag of regular ice will keep the ice frozen (and anything else in there) for at least two days (and maybe 3-4 if it’s storing already-frozen stuff).  They’ll often have oxygen and acetylene tanks for torches, as well, and of course the tools and gear for actual welding and metal-cutting if you want to make Mad Max vehicles when you get to your retreat in the wasteland.”
Thank you, Tar!