“Remember, all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.” – The Matrix
In reverse, The Matrix is about a guy who quits drugs and gets a job.
What opinions do you have that you can’t tell all of the other people you know? I’m willing to bet that since you read here, you have quite a few. I have plenty of them. When someone doesn’t have views they can’t share, well, I think that’s probably the best definition of an NPC: always believing the current thing. I swear, if an NPC takes over, it will be a dictator-sheep.
One of the more difficult things is keeping track of what to believe. Scott Adams (more about him in a future post) famously noted that the anti-vaxxers were right, but there was no way that they could have known that they were right based on the evidence at the time. I respectfully disagree. The application of a new technology to stop a disease in a panic? What about that says, “wise decision”? Especially when Pfizer™ and the other “vaxx” manufacturers demanded secret language in their contracts to absolve themselves of liability.
Literally nothing about the vaxx looked legitimate. There were more warning signs than a cocktail with Bill Cosby.
What about January 6? The most visible icon of the January 6 “insurrection” was the face painted dude with the bison headdress. Turns out he was led around by various security folks until they found an unlocked door for him to go through. It’s like they picked the silliest looking person for the photo opportunity of a decade. Yet, folks didn’t see through that, either.
Not pictured: someone who actually broke into the Capitol.
If the January 6 protest was a real insurrection rather than people who (mainly!) were there peacefully, even observing the velvet ropes. How did I know it was fake? If it were a real insurrection, they’d still be there.
January 6 was political theater, and was misrepresented by nearly every news media outlet, and was also lied about by the Left every chance they got.
Am I correct in everything I believe? Certainly not. But I try, every time that I can, to look to the things that are True, Beautiful, and Good to be my guideposts. Some of my calls are wrong, but with those guideposts, it’s difficult to be too far off the mark.
It is clear that if we don’t think different thoughts than those the media would put in our heads, there is something wrong with us.
When the Kardashians die, they won’t be buried or cremated – they’ll be recycled.
It’s odd, because the pushback comes the closer we come to the Truth, because that’s dangerous. If I were to walk around proclaiming that Hillary Clinton is 40 feet tall (6 milliliters), blue, and made of cheese, people would think I was a nut and ignore me. But when I wrote about the “vaxx” – the website came under the biggest attacks ever.
The attacks don’t come when people are silly – the attacks come when the ideas presented might make people think. And the attacks come with a fury that is only reserved for those who have committed actual heresy.
Leftism is a religion. Sure, some of them say they have other religions, but Leftism is generally their guiding star. Recently Jane Fonda suggested murdering anyone who was against abortion. And abortion is one of the greatest sacraments of their church. No one on The View told her she was wrong, just that she shouldn’t say that in public. And a Leftist, as long as they are a True Believer, will always be excused for amazingly horrible comments like Hanoi Jane spouted out of her wrinkly piehole.
At her age, I’m sure she casts a lot of smells.
But someone on the Right? The guy who ran the Firefox™ project was essentially fired because he donated to a group that was against legalizing gay marriage years earlier. Years earlier when Obama was likewise “against” gay marriage.
Now it’s microaggressions and any perceived slight that someone can make up.
There are only a couple of reasons to do this. The biggest is the one that I think that is operative here: they’re scared because they think they might be wrong, or that they know that they’re lying. Again, if I go outside and tell someone who is a Leftist that they’re an idiot because their house is floating, well, they can be confident that life is okay for them because their house isn’t floating. They know it to be true, and don’t need me to validate that for them.
Their economic ideas? They’re upset at me (mostly) because they’re not sure they have the Truth, and they simply cannot have anyone thinking about alternatives to their ideas. I mean, I’m totally sure that communism would totally have worked if only the average 20-year-old at Harvard® had been in charge.
I remember the time I came up with a cure for dementia. That brings back memories!
And that, partially, is why I write the way that I do. If you can make a great point, you can win the debate. If you can make a great point and poke fun at the idea? The idea itself becomes the joke.
As near as I can tell, that’s always one of the biggest crimes of totalitarian regimes: a joke about a Communist Party official could send an unlucky Soviet citizen to the GULAG for 25 years. That isn’t a sign of strength, it’s a sign of fear.
That is why they want to shut down the conversation – they’re afraid. They know as well as anyone that putting a 300 pound model in lingerie isn’t Beautiful, True, or Good. It’s hilarious. But until we’re not afraid to point out that the emperor has no clothes (and that the lingerie model needs more) you can tell that the struggle hasn’t been ridiculed enough, though that time is coming.
And then maybe we’ll all find out our secret opinions were shared by millions. Except that one I have about motor oil, shower curtains, escalators, and garden tools. There are places I’m not gonna go.
The reason “they” act like they do is that they know they can get away with it, and that it irritates us. But, there’s always light at the end of the tunnel, hopefully Silicon Valley Bank at the present. My inkling is that by September things will get interesting. Give it 6 months to fester.
Bingo. My next post (Ides of March) talks about that. Same timeframe.
I have to say, not having any concern about being doxxed makes life a lot easier in most ways. There isn’t much I can’t say and I don’t much care how upset They get about it.
Gotcha, and understood. Yet, most folks can’t go to work and say exactly what they thing.
Buckle up for one crazy week when Wall Street opens up at 9:30 AM EDT.
Key point to remember: The Fed’s yearlong program of raising interest rates have crashed the value of older bonds held as “assets” that were issued during ZIRP at effectively zero interest.
The Fed itself has unrealized bond losses of over a literal trillion dollars for these “assets” they hold on their balance sheet. The various US banks have 620 billion dollars in similar unrealized losses. The banks can’t keep up with ironclad “stress-test” Federal collateralization requirements as their old bond losses continue to mount while the Fed continues to raise interest rates.
Silicon Valley Bank tried to meet collateralization targets last Wed by trying to sell a block of old underwater bonds at a 2 billion dollar loss. The sale failed because nobody wanted to buy such stinky bonds, and the bank failed within hours thereafter. Another bank, Signature, failed similarly over the weekend.
So the current scorecard for pre-Monday morning is two banks worth a combined 300 billion are toast, and so just like that we now have higher bank crash losses than we had when WaMu went down in 2008. Republic is gonna fail next, their stock is down over 70% in pre-trading and depositors are literally lined up outside the doors right now for withdrawals. There’s a half-dozen more with crashing pre-market stock prices ready to domino after Republic goes down.
In response, over the weekend The Fed / FDIC / US Treasury filled up some sandbags to try and stop the flood.
First, the (paltry) $125 billion currently in the FDIC Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) was pledged to cover ALL $300 billion of depositor funds at SVC and Signature – including the 90% of fat-cat accounts that are over the $250K limit for FDIC coverage. A whiff of desperation there, we can’t let the rich crash the economy when their money is cut off. Let’s see, 300-125, nuthin from nuthin, carry the nuthin…and here comes Republic et al…. um, they’re gonna need a bigger boat.
Second, Treasury moved $25 billion in couch change from their Exchange Stabilization (“Slush”) Fund into the created-from thin-air-over-the-weekend new Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP). If you are a bank like SVB, instead of trying to hold a fire sale of underwater bonds that nobody wants and destroying your bank in the process, you can now apply for a one-year loan from the BTFB and use your underwater Treasury bonds for collateral at the ORIGINAL, not CURRENT UNDERWATER, price.
This is literally like a bank using a 200,000 mile clunker car that is collateral on a loan FROM the bank TO a sub-prime borrower as collateral to get a new second loan FOR the bank FROM the subprime borrower for the ORIGINAL NEW CAR price.
They musta been drinkin’ some pretty strong margaritas at Treasury this weekend. But IF you accept this insanity as a valid financial move, why then EVRY SINGLE BANK with 620 billion in underwater Treasury paper is gonna wanna use it as collateral for a BTBF loan. Why not? Let’s see, 620-25, nuthin from nuthin…
And Joe has officially said none of this is gonna cost the taxpayer a single thin dime.
The scary part is that also last week Joe announced a expanded $6 trillion Federal Budget starting in October. Um, just who does he think is gonna buy even more US Treasury debt to finance this when both the Fed and the Banks are literally choking on what they’ve already tried to swallow?
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/28/1000843544/biden-proposes-a-huge-hike-in-government-spending-in-a-6-trillion-budget
Got gold?
As Biden said, the taxpayers will not be paying for this depositor guarantee: it will come from insurance premiums paid by bank depositors. Ummm.
Are not bank depositors not also taxpayers?
And don’t the insurance premiums come out of funds that a bank might otherwise use to pay interest on deposits? And if the bank can’t pay both premiums and interest, shouldn’t I take my money out of the bank and buy Treasury bonds directly? (It’s a rhetorical question, by the way, since my cash is in a credit union.)
And if I pull my cash out of the bank to buy Treasuries (or Classic Collectible Pez dispensers), doesn’t the bank need to liquidate some if its assets to return my money?
And isn’t pulling cash out of the bank where this problem got started last week?
“…shouldn’t I take my money out of the bank and buy Treasury bonds directly? (It’s a rhetorical question)”
That’s not rhetorical at all, it’s EXACTLY what is happening that is sucking out capitalization that the banks so desperately need.
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-news-today-02-06-2023/card/banks-are-hemorrhaging-deposits-at-record-rate-qU6FT1LLSVOwRdmPurQ8
Money always moves to higher payback when it is allowed to do so.
PPT is here, and big moves take longer than we expect. 6 months for this to wring out.
I believe you are 100% correct on the jig being up for the left, the downside is I think that will coincide with shooting,
It can go on longer than we think. 2026 is not unrealistic, and it might go to 2032.
I believe that you can’t say this or that is the definition of the former Soviet Union.
Long March quisling fellow traveler traitors view CCCP West as a feature and not a bug.
They are just that faculty lounge incompetent to not notice China and Russia growing closer and they don’t have the intellectual firepower to learn about useful idiot status.
Isn’t that odd how banksters always fund Bolsheviks. (honk!)
I keep my clown shoe a size 13 so there is no tripping over the free rainbow stew bubble up everywhere. (honk!)
You can say anything you want, as long as it’s silly. Hence? Clown World.
Writing books, commenting on the intarwebs, that recent YouTube interview, all under my own name, will have them come for me sooner or later. I will not live in fear; I will not be a slave.
Amen.
There’s nothing you can’t say, even in 2023.
The eternal question is always this:
Are you prepared to look the Consequences of saying The Thing in the eye, spit in it, roll up your sleeves, tell them to take their best shot, and take on all comers?
That’s what always separates the lions from the lambs, and the warriors from the woke and the womenfolk.
True words. Yet, how many folks have a job where they are free to speak their minds?
Nobody in the professional field. Thus, Aesop’s nom de guerre on the internet.
Thus, I laugh when he suggests throat punching a boss in the throat repeatedly if they tell someone to come to work through a snowstorm. Like Aesop’s ever done that in real life.
I called him on that.
Aesop’s reply “I don’t work for stupid bosses.”
I laughed and said you must change jobs a lot as stupid bosses are almost an oxymoron.
Unemployment, it’s a thing.
Losing your professional license is also a thing.
Thus, Walter Mitty is also a thing.
People who get things done don’t brag about them before they really do it. Braggers I’ve found very seldom do what they brag about. The Silent Service DOES, but it doesn’t brag about it.
The 3 “S”‘s don’t include internet bragging.
Ask Rittenhouse about your social media (which BTW a “nom de guerre” will NOT protect you IF you’re not a Fed) and how they search for your “comments of intent” (aka Bragging) on it.
Oh, I have no doubt club Fed knows who I am. But I also know that no one knows everything I think . . . but me.
Your psychoanalysis via internet gets weaker by the attempt, Mike.
Don’t quit your day job. Or better yet, do exactly that. You might learn something you don’t know yet.
BTW, not a lot of snowstorms to contend with hereabouts in the first place, but don’t let factual irrelevance stop you from spinning a good whopper.
But me changing jobs a lot?
Guilty as charged.
Probably filled out around 2000 W-2s so far. Sometimes five a week, for years.
Hollywood’s a pain like that.
(You’d probably be amazed to find out how freeing it is when you see firsthand that you don’t have to work for every @$$hole out there, just for a check.)
Been actually fired half a dozen times. May happen again. Who knows?
But never been unemployed for more than about a day or two, nor ever collected unemployment.
Work is work.
Life is life.
The two intersect, but they are not the same thing at all.
Everyone needs to pay the bills, but a job is just a job.
And I don’t owe my soul to the company store, or bleed for someone else’s bottom line.
If anyone’s paycheck rules their entire life, they’re a wage-slave. Freely or not, by their own choice or not, it ends up being the same thing.
Don’t assume everyone makes the same choices you do, or labors under the same burdens.
And probably best if you’d concern yourself more about you, and a lot less about me.
I think I’ve only suggested that course to you, directly and explicitly, about ten times, so far, on half a dozen sites for going on two years now.
And still the penny hasn’t dropped.
Laughter stings, eh?
Amusing is.
See you don’t have to overperform like Shakespeare to send a zinger.
Obvious Troll is obvious. I’ve tried laughing and pointing, but you yet persist in thinking it’s with you, rather than at you.
If you were as perspicacious as you imagine yourself witty, you’d have noticed I posted an entire comment here, times without number, without any pathological need to refer to you in any way whatsoever. You’d be amazed how civil the internet could be for you if you’d try not scooping out your underpants to lob your greetings every time you enter a comment stack.
Embrace the novelty, if you’re even capable.
But then you’d have to get attention by being intelligent or insightful, instead of simply obnoxious, and where’s the fun in that, right?
Check your Gig Line Marine.
Maybe you never used a mirror?
Matthew 7:5
English Standard Version
5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
Try to remember that to get respect, you have to demonstrate respect. Your Snidely Whiplash attitudes get you blasted by many off your own blog. Would you like some cut an paste’s of that blasting, Sir?
I respected you when I first visited your blog but as many other folks point out, Aesop doesn’t do debate (nice versions) you’ve burned that supply of respect up.
Trolling comes from you Sir Aesop. At least for a few weeks you’ve dropped out of the Ukraine Proxy war and “sucking Putin’s junk” comments. I had hope but “HERE’S AESOP” again, sigh.
You might notice I don’t carry on in anger Marine. I do post supporting ideas often enough when your comments seem reasonable. But those you ignore, eh?
Check your Gig Line Marine.
It’s not and never been about evidence for the left. I mean we’ve seen this time and time again but a little tiny personal note on it, was mid summer in 2021 so the NotaVaxx was all the rage. I work in a hospital, and not only did we have our own reports but the reports of every hospital in the region. We started to see a trickle at first but then higher and higher numbers of people that were vaxxed against covid… coming down with covid. It was not wildly publicized at this point but I happened to be over at a BBQ where there were some of my left leaning friends. I just mentioned this fact, that indeed higher numbers of people that were vaxxed were coming down with the covid than were not. It was like I snatched a puppy and threw it in a bonfire. I was attacked from all corners. I stood my ground and eventually just shrugged and left. Every single one of those people that were vaxxed, got triple vaxxed came down with covid that year and had it in a miserable way. Oh Jester I don’t belive you, you can’t know what your talking about the offical sources would talk about it if that was the case. Nevermind I was telling them the raw actual data as to what was going on. Now I don’t care if someone got the shot (I did the J&J regretfully and it caused me some issues but I’m relitively young and took a chance.) I don’t care if they get all the covid shots and boosters to the 9th degree. But the fact the Left turned it in to the new savior and when you had hard facts to show this was not working it shifted to.. Oh well you got the covid less bad with the shot(s). But none of that can actually be substantiated. What seems to be the general viral progression is viruses want to survive to make more and killing the host is a bad way to do that so often Viruses seem to evolve to be less deadly as well as oh gosh natural immunity builds up against these things. However the big final truth that I’d admittedly tried to avoid from my left leaning all hail science crowd is that they are the worst, the absolute worst about following science and adjusting as new data presents itself. In short they can never be wrong. They are -terrified- of it.
I’ve seen it here, as well. I know two people who did the J&J. Both had open heart surgery. This is just a taste of things we’ll see in the next decade. Turbo-cancer? It’s on the table.
Since infinite money can be loaned from nothing, why haven’t the banks kept their all deposits on hand? Because they “invested” them in other shenanigans to (hopefully) make even more money.
Yup. And it turns out that Treasury Bonds are . . . toxic.
Want a piece of truth the Left absolutely hates?
The clot shot has killed more American children in the last 18 months than American soldiers died in World War One.
Not-A-Vaxx called and left you a message:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELEgcY7k7cA
The toll over the next decade or three is going to be frightful.
Read a story today about the potential that it was giving infants turbo-cancer. Scary, scary stuff.
100%. Many, many more to come. No one asks me if I’m vaxxed anymore. They know. And they’re embarrassed.
All the vaxxholes who gave people a hard time at work have gone to Silent Running.
It’s an open joke amongst the purebloods; the younger ones roll their eyes and giggle about it.
Mel Brooks was right:
“Tragedy is me stubbing my toe.
Comedy is you falling off a cliff.”
Who’s laughing last?
Very true Aesop, you’re on it.
Vaxxed neighbor was asking me if I’d heard anything about repairing spike damage.
The Japanese seem to have some real world options under study right now. Interesting that the Japanese also developed Ivermectin, eh?
Pity Horse wormer was DANGEROUS or something when COVID rolled in…
Oh, we are. I’m hoping that many folks I meet are triple boosted!