No, I'm not dead (yet). Like the blurb says, I do this after family, home and job. I've been busy and not able to have the time I believe is necessary to devote to this.

I have said for years now, governmental control of healthcare will lead to people control. Here's your evidence: Here's one of a thousand opinion pieces: Climate Change is a Health Crisis. The Treatment is Legislative Climate Action. White House: U.S. INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE FINANCE PLAN (PDF). Here's one from the CDC: Firearm injuries are a serious public health problem.

Government control of healthcare leads to control of you. Because all totalitarian acts can be justified with "if it saves one life...". Thusly, serious encroachments to curtail your freedoms can be justified with the simple phrase, "This improves health outcomes and saves the healthcare agency money." As a result, declaring the climate as a "public health crisis" can justify the end of all domestic mining of fossil fuels, drastic restrictions on the importation of foreign fossil fuels, and drastic taxes on what fossil fuels are imported to "discourage" their use, it goes on and on. The same with firearms. By declaring firearms a "PHC," they can (not Constitutionally) justify limits on the production, purchase, and ultimately possession and confiscation of firearms. To further discourage you, massive taxes on firearms and ammunition, a heavy burden of licenses and bureaucratic red tape will be imposed on you, all in an effort to "curb gun violence."

As a slight aside, San Francisco will soon pay career criminals to not shoot people. I guess that proves that guns don't kill people, because if guns kill people, why not pay the guns? Instead they are paying felons to not commit murder.

Back to the original topic. This goes way beyond a "soda tax," or restrictions/bans on tobacco, alcohol, sugar, trans-fats or anything else the CDC/FDA says is "bad for you." You might want to look up the Eighteenth Amendment and the Hatch Act. That was the one time Social Engineering was written into the Constitution and the only Amendment to be repealed.

The people in government who seek power are doing this. I do not discount and actually agree that we need to reduce carbon emissions, too many people are gunned down every year, or most of us are overweight from a caloric intake way off the scale. All that being said, the government trying to "solve" these crises this way, it's like using a flamethrower in your house to kill a single spider. It's heavy-handed, over-reactionary, too broad of a "treatment" and will cause many unintended consequences that are more serious than the original problem.

I happened across this the other day. TikTok video shows mom receiving $9 paycheck after working over 70 hours.

This is how young people are failed by our schools and their parents, plus just how duplicitous Pravdas are.

So, let’s go over the facts. I picked these numbers off the back of her paycheck.

Effective hourly wage (708 + 150.81 divided by 70.80) = 12.13/hr.

So the math checks out and agrees. What our bartender and reporter didn’t mention was the average of $70 (assuming she was scheduled 10 shifts over 2 weeks) she brought home in tips every night. Yeah, did you hear her talk about the $708 she brought home? Other than mentioning "why you should tip your server," she didn't reference how much she got. And frankly, working as a tipped server in some of my jobs, it is a common occurrence to under-report your tips. You can't wiggle out of the tips added to a credit card, but I would not be surprised that at least $5-10 of her cash tips "disappears" on the way to the manager's office to count tips at the end of every shift. We could be easily talking about another $50 in income she took home on top of the $708 she did report.

So if Ms. Cortez would like to be paid more on payday instead of just paying the taxes, I suggest the manager keep her credit card tips and “deposit” them into her payroll so instead of taking home $70 every night, she gets a bigger check at the end of two weeks. See? Problem solved! And the unanticipated problem to this is now all of her tips might not make it into her account, or there will be a “service fee” for the business owner to do the bookkeeping to do this for her. No matter what, chances are high she wouldn’t get the whole $708.

Now, this is partly the fault of the school system because if Ms. Cortez is sincere in her anguish, the schools did not teach this woman math or reasoning. If she knew her video statements were bullshit and was trying to be a drama queen or whatever for likes (or whatever Tik-Tok does) then her parent(s) failed to teach her truthfulness and integrity.

Likewise, it is the fault of the reporter to perpetuate either the idiocy or duplicitousness of this woman by being sympathetic to Ms. Cortez in her article. It is also condescending to the reader, as it implies that most people don't know about this issue. I am sure most people have at one time in their lives worked in a "tipped" job. I personally always tip. How much I tip depends on the server. More than five visits (take your order, deliver drinks/appetizers, deliver food, check on you/top off drinks, deliver check) also gets more. A smile, even when they are obviously exhausted, gets a lot more.

Crap like this does not make me angry, it does not make me upset. It makes me sad to see such mindsets in the world.

Before I get into what I’m commenting about, I have to lay down the context, because most people don’t know what’s behind what they know.

Marking the Jewish people to ostracize them from the other people where they lived was documented to start in 807 AD with Abbassid caliph Haroun al-Raschid, who ruled the Abbasid Caliphate. This Caliphate stretched from what is now Libya to Iraq/Iran and even farther east.

Pope Innocent III and his buddies got into that ship in 1215, who decreed in Canon 68 that Jews and Muslims must wear clothing to set them apart from Christians. The Nazi’s, of course, were persecuting Jewish people from the moment they came to power. It wasn’t until September 1941 that they came up with this:

4/19/2023 Update: The graphic that was here and showed the Nazi Star of David has been removed by the request of the owner of hatWRKS. She told me what she had to go through to get one of her suppliers back, and she didn't want the whole kerfuffle starting all over again to to my image here. I have accommodated her, because this was not an unreasonable request.

From that point on, it was easy to tell who the Jews were, so they could be persecuted by the Brownshirts, the Gestapo, the SS and anybody else who swallowed the propaganda.

When it comes right down to it, this was a simple and visible method to separate a group of people from the whole and that mark was a tacit approval by society to ostracize, ridicule and even assault the wearer.

The biggest trait of Americans (not necessarily citizens of the US) is when someone is forced to wear a “mark of shame” (which is what this is), Americans will also put it on as a very large “FUCK YOU” to those in favor of these badges. It also means “we got your back” to those who are forced to wear it.

Which brings me to the whole point of this piece.

The other day, HatWRKS a hat store in Nashville, TN evidently put an image on their Instagram account (since removed due to a bunch of crybaby SJW’s) of a yellow Star-of-David with the words “Not Vaccinated” rather than “Jude” (German for “Jew”). This made the local news in Nashville, Protestors surround Nashville hat store following controversial Instagram post.

And in typical Leftist temper tantrum style, SJW’s surrounded the store in protest and held up a sign that reads, “No NAZIs in Nashville!” I really like how it looks like they initially forgot the “s” in NAZI and added it later.

So can someone tell me, how voluntarily wearing a sign similar to what the Nazi’s used to persecute Jewish people makes them a Nazi themselves? To me, this is a statement that the current government and society is ostracizing people based on their personal choice. We are willing to protest that social force to conform, by externally and proudly wearing the most visible symbol of persecution.

I just bought a fedora last month, so I’m not in the market for a new hat. But the next time I pass through Nashville, I’m getting a hat from these people. I’m BUYcotting this place!

And in going through news articles, I found out Stetson and Goolrin Bros have ceased their partnership with HatWRKS. Please contact Stetson at 855-707-2798 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., and Goolrin Brothers.

Please, clearly and respectfully inform them of your displeasure of their choice and your choice to never purchase their products in the future.

This came to me while I was thinking about what to say for Memorial Day.

The term “Blood and Treasure” is in reference to the money of the United States being spent to put our young men and women into harm’s way on foreign shores. The decision to spend this Blood and Treasure should never be made lightly or for frivolous reasons.

Truthfully, no price can be placed on a simple flag-draped coffin.

I’m talking about this because a simple test can be made to see if the cause is just. One simple question to ask, and the answer to it will answer the question, “Should the United States spend its’ Blood and Treasure there?”

The real question is, “If we laid our war dead in the soil of where we are going, would they be honored?”

Out of all the days to thank a Veteran for their service, Memorial Day is not the one.

Today is not about the living veteran, rather those who did not come home. Today is not "National BBQ Day" or just a day off from work. It is a day to remember and honor those who are no longer with us who surrendered their lives to give us this opportunity.

Please, visit a Veterans' Cemetery today. Walk softly, heroes lie sleeping there. We also pause today to remember our POW/MIA.

If you have ever seen a POW/MIA table, let me explain what is symbolizes:

I’m sure you’ve heard of Occam’s Razor, but you might not know exactly what it means. If you do, good for you! If you don’t, here you go:

A scientific and philosophical rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities.

Simply put, “The simplest explanation is almost always the most correct.”

Let me put the story up here before I get any farther. Fauci admits US sent $600k to Wuhan lab at center of Covid ‘leak’ theory – but defends ‘modest’ virus research funding.

To refresh your memory, in late 2019, three scientists at the Wuhan virology lab came down with a “mysterious illness.” This facility was located across the way from a “wet market” where food such as produce, animals and seafood are sold. These scientists likely stopped at this wet market to pick up food on their way home each night, giving this “mysterious illness” to other people at the market while they were in their contagious and asymptomatic state.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), not wanting to “lose face” by letting everyone know that this escaped from a lab performing “gain of function” testing (i.e., weaponizing it), said in essence, “this came over from bats sold and consumed at the market.”

Of course, the Domestic Pravda totally swallowed this line (just because Trump said the opposite) and in a magnificent case of Stockholm Syndrome, decided to squash and suppress any differing viewpoint from the CCP Party Line. Those of us who applied Occam’s Razor to the facts in evidence, were branded “Conspiracy Theorists!” and actively silenced.

So let’s look at the facts here. These facts are not in dispute.

1. A virus we now call COVID-19 had its’ “Patient Zero” at that wet market in Wuhan, China.
2. There is a laboratory in Wuhan within a stones’ throw of the market that was performing virology research into various virii, including COVID.

Now we have two possible scenarios for the outbreak:

1. This strain of Corona spontaneously jumped from bats to humans at that specific particular wet market out of the thousands across China,
-OR-
2. The virology lab across the road from the market had an accidental release and the first people not part of the lab staff that were infected worked or shopped at that market.

Occam’s Razor clearly points to scenario #2, because it is much more likely to occur. Scenario 1 is plausible and possible, just not very likely. Like betting on 00 on the Roulette wheel versus Black. You’re going to hit Black a lot more times (47.3% of the time) than you will 00 (2.6% of the time).

There is no “conspiracy” here. Yes, Fauci raised money for the Wuhan lab and gave it to them. Did Fauci give that money specifically to fund that project? I don’t have any credible evidence to point for or against that point. Occam suggests the lab took the money and spent it on what they wanted to research. They could have spent it all on hookers and blow, I have no evidence either way.

And because I keep an open mind about things and research over a wide range of websites, I had seen documents stating that Fauci was involved with funding this lab before the lockdown was put in place.

The bad news is, the people who still don’t believe this was from a lab-leak still believe “The evidence to impeach Trump is right there in the Mueller Report.” But when asked to point to the page and paragraph with their “evidence,” they just fall silent.

In the end, Occam’s Razor always points to idiots and blundering people that cause bad things to happen way more than any coordinated group of people carrying out a nefarious conspiracy. The more suppositions, conspiracies and leaps of logic and faith it takes to explain something, the more and more likely that isn’t the explanation.

I realize we will never really know exactly how COVID-19 infected humans. Between the paranoid level of secrecy and “saving face” of the CCP and the lack of information about its’ first start on humans, anyone who really knows will ever tell. Only now, 18 months after three Chinese "scientists” working at the Wuhan lab came down with “a mysterious illness” are some truths coming to light. It is my suspicion, like many others out there, that someone screwed up and carried it home to spread to the rest of us.

If the CCP had weaponized it and actually wanted to unleash it on the world, they probably would have done it the 12 Monkeys way. Get contagious people onto multiple long international flights at the same time, making it impossible to pin down the “patient zero” and the origin of the virus.
Something like this COVID-19 outbreak concerns me, but it doesn’t scare me.

What scares me is there are groups of people out there, with access to the keys of power that were waiting for a crisis of this scale to trigger their contingency plans.

Hang with me on this. Think about what we’ve been through in the last year.

1. Federal, state and local governments ordered private businesses to cease operations. I don’t see that power granted to the government in the Constitution.
2. The debt of the federal government jumped tremendously. It’s now over $28 Trillion. Our whole economy only generates $20 Trillion.
3. Between the drop in the economy and the boost in the federal debt, our debt ratio is now over 140%. We owe more than we can generate.

Now, when a country owes more than it’s worth, well, just plug the word “hyperinflation” into your favorite search engine, with words like “Weimar Republic,” “Zimbabwe,” “Venezuela” and “Greece.”

We have also seen absurd levels of restrictions placed on the American People. From being arrested for kayaking in the ocean alone, to not being able to buy things like vegetable seeds, to a woman who was arrested and jailed for making a choice of opening her nail salon so she could earn money to feed her hungry children, and then the judge demands an apology from her, this shit has got to stop.

Logic and common sense reasoning demands the conclusion that there are individuals and groups with ill intent towards the United States and the American people out there. We see people every day actively working towards tearing this country down to the bedrock and rebuilding it in their twisted image. From the halls of power have come Common Core Math, the Affordable Care Act and more. From the common person we have political riots at a scale the Brownshirts would have applauded. Incessantly browbeating our neighbor over their immutable personal characteristics, ostracizing people for their perceived differences in belief on any subject, the list goes on. To those at the highest levels of the federal government now exposed as actively trying to pull off a silent coup through lies, misinformation and more.

I’m not saying these groups are coordinated. I actually kind of wish they were. It would be easier to stop this madness by finding one spot or several places where the proper application of force could bring the whole plan crashing down. But there’s no coordination or unifying plan. It’s like 40 six-year-old children running amok in the classroom with one teacher trying to regain order. There are children coloring on the walls, taking a crap in the teacher’s desk drawers, smoking weed in the corner, setting the curtains on fire, destroying furniture and more.

The difference between a conspiracy theory and a real conspiracy is, if you can tie up all of the loose ends into one nice, neat package, it’s a conspiracy theory. Real conspiracies are just like freedom and a healthy economy. Everyone is acting in their own best interests and on their own agenda. There are loose ends all over the place like you just flung an entire pot of spaghetti all over the kitchen.

I don’t know how or even if it can be stopped. All I can hope for is the Americans of today bring forth the spirit of their forefathers. To have a natural skepticism, suspicion and inherent distrust of the government. To take a hard look at what’s going on and knowing the difference between the government asking for social distancing, wash your hands and all the rest, versus the government ordering what businesses get to remain open, then using the police enforce those decisions. To have the backbone for when the government tries to go too far, the citizens say “NO” and have the firepower to make it stick.

What I am seeing right now is a test run. We are being tested to see how far government can push, how much the people will take and if we can be psychologically manipulated into acting against our own best interests to comply with government mandates.

Here’s what should keep you awake at night. Right now there are people taking notes on everything that worked and didn’t work. When we get out of this, those “bad actors” are going to go back to their think tanks, review the data and revise what they have. Then they will run some more experiments here and there to see if they can work out the bugs for the next time.

And there will be a next time.

This is the other video my responder gave me to watch. Please excuse me for a moment while I put a fine edge on my fillet knife.

It sounds like this guy studied at the knee of Robert Reich. “18 million Millionaires.” What he didn’t tell you was about 14.4 million of them (80% if you don’t math) are first-generation millionaires. Also, most of these self-made millionaires didn’t start on their “second million” until they were on average 50 years old. That means they worked hard, lived within their income and saved for THIRTY YEARS to get to that point. He laments the wealth of the millionaires, yet implies those rich people were lucky, when it actually took decades of hard work and discipline.

In stark contrast to those millionaires is the nihilistic YOLO hedonists that seem to be the prevailing type of young person. These YOLO’s dig themselves a $90K student debt hole at age 21 for a worthless degree in Gender Studies or Comparative English, and then never earn enough to pay that student debt off. That’s not including the car loan that has “negative equity” from their prior two cars plus the credit card debt as they try to keep up with the Joneses. With all of that debt and stress, these people will never realize that goal of becoming a millionaire. That inevitably leads to anger, resentment and jealousy.

He then laments for an extended period crying about how broken the US medical system is. Thankfully, I’ve already written on the subject to provide a simple, clear solution to fix healthcare, some of it anyway. Curing Healthcare. And any time you want to see what American socialized healthcare would look like, go to any Veterans Administration hospital. It’s free, and you pretty much get what you pay for it. Once you get into the system, it’s pretty good. But to get into it, you’re looking at the paperwork equivalent of trying to successfully pole vault a 16’ tall bar with a 6’ pole.
The best way I can describe such a system is, “The efficiency of the DMV and the compassion of the IRS.” And Charlie Gard is one of the many victims faces of such a system.

The OP also quoted Albert Einstein from the first article in the first issue of Monthly Review, which Al founded in 1947. Why Socialism:

Here’s the conclusion:

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?

Albert died in 1955, and I wonder, after he saw some of the ravages that the Soviet system inflicted upon its own people, if he ever changed his mind on the subject. By the time Albert had passed, the Soviet government had starved to death or just executed over twenty million people. And every other centralized economy has followed suit to varying degrees.

In conclusion, I will never claim or imply that Capitalism is a perfect system. It’s not. No system developed or run by us fallible humans will ever get close to that goal. Capitalism is a cobbled-together mish-mash of kluges that the only things keeping it from exploding have been duct tape, bailing wire and hope. But it’s the best we can do. Yes, people are “left behind” in a Capitalist system for a variety of reasons. But the people in the middle and high ends of the bell-curve move the whole population to the right. By their efforts, more and better goods are produced cheaper. The excess capital they generate is used by government or private corporations to provide for those who can’t work. The poorest of the poor in this country would be considered rich in any undeveloped country.

The only allure of a Socialist economy is that the people on the right side of the economic bell curve are taxed and forced all the way to the left side of the curve, where everybody sits, equally in squalor and misery. Is that really the kind of “equality” you want? Because that’s a real “Dog in the Manger” kind of attitude to have.

Then, of course, when the common people start exercising their own “enlightened self-interest” and throwing the centralized and command-controlled economy into chaos, well, the leaders just start shooting or starving those “dissidents.” ONE HUNDRED MILLION people between 1917 and 1999 were killed by their own Socialist governments. Everywhere Socialism got a foothold, it became a cancer and people paid the price.

For recent examples of this, in the past few years we heard about the average Venezuelan losing about 17 pounds of body weight from lack of food when the Socialist government nationalized the economy. Or that North Koreans are about 1.5” shorter than their cousins in South Koreas because of the decades of starvation diets. I can’t imagine the amount of mental gymnastics from all of these people who push how wonderful Socialism will be, while simultaneously ignoring the millions of dead in the wake of that same system. If you get the “we’ll get it right this time” argument from them, remind them of Jordan Peterson’s words, “How arrogant can you be to think you’ll do better than everyone else who has already run a Socialist system?”

Failure is a feature, not a bug in the system of Socialism. It literally requires individuals to do things against their own self-interest. While you can get people to do that in the short-term, maybe, in the long term, human nature wins out. And when people’s desire to act in their own self-interest exceeds their desire to act for the community, Socialist governments have the choice to exterminate the people or collapse. When they had the choice, these governments always chose the former.

You can’t sell me on the advantages of Socialism. It looks great on paper, however it fails miserably when put into execution. Marx and Engels were the greatest snake-oil salesman in human history.

Because I wrote these at the same time, part 2 is under this post, not above.

Before I say anything else, Socialism is defined (by me and older dictionaries) as “An economic model where the government controls the means of production and distribution of goods.”

This all started with the Planet Money Podcast Socialism 101. I went on their Facebook page and told them how I could take their featured “Socialist Economist” apart without any difficulty.

I was ultimately responded to by another user who said (I did not edit or clean it up) this:

We Produce More Now Than Ever In Our Recorded History, And The Workforce----The Ones Who Make It ALL Possible----Are Poorer Than Perhaps Ever(, & Drowning In Foisted Debt).....We're CLEARLY Being Scammed ---> #FollowTheMoney
Management ain't Nothin', But it's Not hard. Bezos, etc., is Nothing without the Laborers; They're Almost Everything-----With Or Without him. C(r)apitalism's payscale is Mostly 'Regressive'...
I disagree with the Minimum Wage, as it has been structured, because it Doesn't work; it's Too Easily defused. It's idea's heart is in the right place, but it is Too Flawed to be implemented effectively. What's Needed is the 20-to-1 rule; Not necessarily that Exact fraction, But That Principle. Tie the wages of the Lowest Payed to the Highest Payed.
That said, it's better than nothing, For The Moment.
Imagine NOT working, Exploiting the Labor of those who Do( work), And Extracting this
https://www.google.com/imgres...
The fact of the matter is, Moving "up" is Nice, but Realistically Not Everyone CAN because of Simple Physics------You Can't pick yourself off the ground. There Needs to be people in All Stratas for the society to function-----The Higher Up, The Less Possible Positions Available. If you work, you should have enough to survive And enjoy your Life/Freetime. Wages Need to be Tied to business's ( Total-)Pies, not Archaic Extortion-Brackets.
Janitors may not be Technically as valuable as Scientists, True, But, if the scientists have to do the Janitation As Well, they'll hardly have Time for the Science-----Suddenly Janitors-Etc. are Revealed To Be Almost As Valuable As Gas To Automobiles, lol.
..and What Good is a Car Without Gas?
We ALL Need Each Other OR The Whole System Ceases Functioning. We're ALL Essential. We're ALL Necessary To Produce 'Value'.

This user gave me a couple of videos to watch, which I did. Here’s the first:

Let me say right off, “The blackest lie is a lie that is a half- truth.”

Yes, some large corporations like Luxotica have an actual monopoly in some markets. That’s called “The Setup” where you throw out a couple facts to establish you’re being truthful. It reminds me of Robert Reich, whom I took apart one of his videos in 12 Strawmen.

It was at 1:26 when the lies started with the “Work or starve” point. Please, Ms. Teachout, point out any point of history outside of the post WWII developed nations, where this wasn’t true.

For the past 100,000 years of Homo Sapiens, this “work or starve” concept has been a simple, cold, hard truth. If you were able to work (not physically or mentally impaired) and didn’t work, no one supported you for very long. Individuals or churches (not government) would perform short-term charity to individuals to “get them on their feet.” The charity quickly stopped if the person receiving the charity didn’t start working somewhere. If this not working and begging continued, the person was deemed a freeloader and “ridden out of town on a rail.” The rail was not part of a railroad, rather a fence rail, which was a quarter-log, like this:

The community would also express their displeasure on this freeloader and to encourage him to leave the area (and serve as a warning to those who might encounter him), he was tarred and feathered.

The only exception to this was when a couple became too old or infirm to work, their children would support them. And example #2 where individuals, not government supported those who could not provide for themselves.

In the Antebellum South, slave owners used to work a slave until they were too old to work anymore, then the owner would give them their “freedom papers” and let them loose to fend for themselves. Believe it or not, it was the Southern states that passed laws to stop that kind of thing. But it was the slave owner, not the government, who had to support the retired slave. Example #3.

Just to keep you off balance, they throw in another fact: 40% of people don’t have at least $400 in a personal emergency fund.

I’m sorry, most people are sold a bill of goods about a job, with the understanding of “you should always go after your dream job.” I’m here to say, “NO. You shouldn’t.” The quickest way to kill your interest in a passion or hobby is to do it as a mandatory income-producing activity on a daily basis, knowing that you have to live off the profits generated from it. You should do what you like and you’re good at doing. I like and am good at fixing machines. That’s what I get paid to do and that keeps food in my fridge, a roof over my head and my lights on. My “dream job” would be to sit here and write content for this website, a YouTube channel and so on. The good news is I know my wordsmithing does not rise to the level where I could earn enough to live off, and I’m okay with that. I am perfectly happy to make this website my #5 priority and crank out articles when a subject or an idea that I want to write about hits me. Not “I have to crank out articles on a consistent basis to keep my income streams going.”

Next, she laments that “All jobs are menial and repetitive.” No matter what you do, you perform the same actions over and over and over again. It doesn’t matter if you’re putting a ball through a net on a basketball court, fixing a machine, assembling a product, or dealing with people. While the exact circumstances may change, the overall concept is exactly the same. Repetition is how we become fast, efficient and good at our jobs. Michael Jordan probably shot 1,000 baskets on the practice court during his career for each shot he took during a game. And not just “shooting baskets” like you or I might do, but the mental work, the physical work and the striving to make each shot better than the last one.

And what IS a job exactly? It starts with a person or company has decided they want you to make/do something for them. It doesn’t matter what “it” they are asking for is. In return you receive an agreed amount of compensation. If you do “it” to the company’s satisfaction, you get to do it again. You are there to generate income for the company, period. If you can’t generate enough income for the company to pay you and generate a profit, you’re out of a job. In 2020 I was hired by “Company A” to be an on-site IT technician at “Company B” to fix stuff broken by the workers of “B.” I was laid off after 4 months because there wasn’t any work for me to do. I sat around for 7+ hours a day watching YouTube videos and other stuff because everyone was still working remotely. There was a financial liability to keep me around. They liked the work that I did, but that was the economic reality. And while I don’t like or justify it, an employer has the duty to monitor you however they see fit concerning your paid work. If you’re not doing what you’re told (and paid) to do, why should you be paid for that time?

If you think there should be “worker protections,” look at places with those kind of policies, like New York Schools. How to Fire an Incompetent Teacher. Something is wrong when a teacher can openly admit to sexually harassing a student, and then got paid to do nothing for SIX YEARS, getting paid $350,000 overall as the school system goes through the laborious (and expensive) process of firing them. The average time it takes to fire a teacher is 830 days, or just over two years, at a cost of $313,000, which means that money wasn’t spent on children or raising the pay of good teachers.

I cannot and will not defend the actions of any company. Not my place to do so, unless I am paid for the effort. Yes, people are worked long, hard and incessantly at an Amazon warehouse. Ms. Teachout decries Amazon’s treatment of their warehouse workers, but I just wonder how many Amazon packages are delivered to her doorstep every month. Because every box she orders keeps Amazon in business and more people are oppressed.

If you don’t like the work practices of a company, don’t buy stuff from them. Leftists are good at boycotts (well, they think they are. Check out how well their boycott of Chik-Fil-A is doing), maybe they should all boycott Amazon. More importantly, you need to BUYCOTT companies who do engage in practices you like.

Here's Part 2, just in case you came here directly.

I have several articles/deep dives I am working on, but this one popped the stack and was flagged as important, so here it is.

Five reasons why you can't "do a Hollywood" and shoot the bad guy in the leg to stop them. Shooting the leg.

If you haven't heard the term "SWATted," This refers to a person (for whatever reason) anonymously calling the police and reporting "Person B has a gun and is threatening to kill people." The police will then respond (appropriately, based on the information they've been given) with overwhelming force and their Special Weapons and Tactics team (hence the acronym SWAT).

In this story, SWAT team with guns drawn raids Arizona home for toddler with fever, An unvaccinated toddler had a high fever. The pediatrician suggested that the family take the child to the emergency room. First of all, the family couldn't afford the $2,500 charge for the ER, and the fever broke soon after the doctor's visit, so they didn't go. When the doctor learned the child did not show at the ER, he called DCS. DCS called the police. The police initially did a "health and wellness" call and were refused entry to the home by the father, so the police came back later that night with a warrant, broke down their door and abducted all three children.

DCS are even more aggressive to use their power and authority than cops are. If DCS thinks a child is in any kind of danger, their first response is to remove the child and investigate later. And if DCS can't abduct the kid, the police will be all to happy to step in. I just love how DCS adheres to the concept of "innocent until proven guilty." [/sarcasm]

So, if the police can SWAT you on the word of a doctor (who's not an agent of the state), if the politicians tell them to round up guns and gun owners, what makes you think they won't hesitate to do so?

The police are not our friends. They are Law Enforcement Officers, which means they (shockingly) enforce the law. LEO's will be friendly toward us, but they are not our friends. They are like an aggressive pit bull. As long as the dog is on the leash and properly controlled by the owner (politicians), they are in their place. And when the politicians let slip the leach and they issue the "attack" command, the dog doesn't care who the target is, only that the owner that feeds him pointed you out.

Never for a second rely that police will quit that job when they are told to ignore the Constitution. When given a choice between feeding their kids or upholding the Constitution, 90+% of them will feed their kids. I'm not angry about it, it's a fact of life. And even if most officers would resign rather than take away your Rights, there's 100 guys just waiting to go through the police academy to bust your head and take your guns.

Any addiction is a terrible thing. A physical or psychological dependence to a chemical drives people to do bizarre things. A person deep into their dependence will do anything to reacquire the euphoria, especially when the symptoms of withdrawal start. When external substances (sugar, caffeine, meth, opiates, etc.) enter the body, they activate the body to release endorphins. The problem is how much is released. On a scale of 1 to 10, let's say the euphoria from a climax during intimate relations is a 3 and lasts from 3 to 10 seconds. A dose of heroin will give you an endorphin release of like 100 for an hour. The down side is that these off-the scale rushes kill the cells that produce the endorphins. Which means your next high will not be as good and you have to increase the dose to overwork those remaining cells even more just to achieve the same high.

Also considering that the part of the brain that registers pleasure and the part that registers pain are in the same area, some people achieve their high through some form of pain. This is because if the pain is too much, endorphins are released to mute the pain signals. Which is why there is a subset of the population likes being tortured. Not torture torture mind you, rather being restrained and lightly flogged, whipped, etc.

I bring these points up to support my statement, Leftists are addicted to anger. The anger they feel when they see an injustice in the world and they want to fix it. Like people who smoke meth feel great after a hit, Leftists feel great whenever they go "all-in" on their cause. The problem is, like illicit substances, that high fades after a while. Which means the Leftist has to take a bigger dose of the SJW wokeness to achieve the same euphoria. This also explains why Leftists are always switching targets, because the euphoria fades and they must rage at something else to regain that righteous level of anger.

I honestly don't think there's a cure. Certainly no rehab facility that I know of. We can only wait for an individual to grow weary of the anger and at that point we can present facts and logic to hopefully bring them to reason.

The term "business model" refers to a written plan that identifies what a company sells and how they intend to make a profit out of selling it.

Here are some examples:

Movie Theater: In case you didn't know it, the theater makes no money off ticket sales. The $17+ you paid to watch a movie all goes to the studio who produced it. The theater makes its money from concessions. All the profits from that hideously expensive popcorn, hot dog, candy and soda is what keeps the theater showing movies.

Social Media: If you didn't know it, YOU'RE THE PRODUCT. Actually, your eyes and attention, and by extension your money. You are sold the concept of "keeping in contact with friends and family, groups, etc." by browsing through Social Media (Facebook, YouTube, Parler, Rumble, Twitter and so on) and when you do so, you see advertisements in your stream. This is why they use a variety of methods to give you recurring dopamine hits. That rush of excitement you feel when you see a notification that someone liked or responded something you said? That's a dopamine hit.

I gave these examples so you can understand the next one.

Advertising has been explained to me as "The science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it." And yes, it is a science. A lot of behavioral science studies are conducted to determine colors, layout and every microscopic detail about how to maximize the impact of an advertisement.

The news networks (ABC/CBS/CNN/NBC, et.al.) sell you panic and fear disguised as "information." Just the term "Breaking News" elicits a massive dopamine hit. Pay attention to the adjectives used as well. Here's an example:

A group of patriots stormed the Capitol on January 6th, attempting to stop the Senate from certifying the Electoral College votes. These patriots believe that several states .

You feel a strong urge to stop what you're doing to see what it is, even though you're late getting your spose to the hospital for an operation. The longer they can keep you glued to whatever you're watching them on, the more advertisements you see and when it comes time to make a purchase of whatever kind, the advertising has convinced you to buy that particular brand or model.

While the term "clickbait" is relatively new, the concept is not. I remember a story from the 50's about a Dwarf Gypsy fortune-teller who escaped from a county jail. The local newspaper's headline the next day was "SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE."

Printed media does the exact same thing. The covers have "clickbait" headlines in an effort to grab your attention, get you to pick up their magazine/newspaper. At that point they have you. From that point it's a very small step to throw the magazine into your cart and buy it. The actual chances that you'll read it when you get home are small, but you bought it and that was the point..

.

A bit of a click-baity title, but it's true.

The other day a Dinesh D'Souza video popped up in my YT feed the other day. I was half-listening, until two words he said jolted me: Reichstag Fire. I had learned about that in High School (back when history was actually taught) and I looked it up again. Here's the synopsis:

Germany had a national election in November 1932. The National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, we know them as Nazi's) had the largest number of seats in the German Reichstag (one-house Congress), but wasn't enough to have a majority. The Nazi's formed a coalition with the Communist Party to place Hitler in the Chancellor's position (think Speaker of the House or Prime Minister) on January 30th, 1933.

The evening of February 27th, a fire was started and destroyed most of the Reichstag building (Capitol). Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch council communist, was accused and admitted he acted alone. There is also some evidence that the Nazi's themselves may have set the fire.

No matter who set it, the day after the fire, at Hitler's request, President Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree into law by using Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. The Reichstag Fire Decree suspended most civil liberties in Germany, including habeas corpus, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right of free association and public assembly, and the secrecy of the post and telephone.

This was a very lucky event for Hitler and his pals. Hitler was already planning on trying to get the Enabling Act passed, which would have allowed the Chancellor (Hitler) to pass laws by decree without the Reichstag. President Hindenburg already had that power, but only in times of emergency. The Enabling Act could be used by Hitler at any time and for any reason.

Here is where I say, "History may not repeat itself, but it sings the same tune."

Just in case you forgot, on January 6th 2021, while the Senate was counting the Electoral College votes, the process was disrupted by a couple dozen active rioters and several hundred curious people who wandered in behind them, who entered the Capitol and windows were smashed, things were taken and Lawmakers were scared.

The result was miles of 10 foot high fencing, topped with concertina wire, concrete barriers and thousands of National Guard troops. The logic of why this works in Washington DC and not at the border escapes me. But I digress.

Earlier this month, a report was published to update the Capitol security posture. Here are two high points:

-The commander of the National Guard for DC can deploy troops at a moment's notice, without being ordered by the President.

-There will be a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) on standby at all times.

If the military can deploy without civilian authorization, this pretty much shreds the concept of Posse Comitatus Act.

The concept and use of QRF was developed in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are soldiers in vehicles at the base, engines running, ready to be out the gate in seconds if the conditions warranted it. Usually the troops were nearby their vehicles and could be out of the base in 1-2 minutes. The QRF was the overwhelming rescue force if a convoy or patrol came under fire.

Now I have to ask: Are we not seeing the same grab for power, the same stripping of Liberty from us? Many of us can't speak our minds for fear of our lives being ruined. There are multiple attempts to squelch the right of the citizen to protect themselves, from criminals and especially our government. Our lawmakers, restrained by the Constitution, lament about "this person" or "that person" having too much latitude in what they say. The sympathetic Lords of Social Media then restrict that person's access  Our Capitol is now a Police State Zone.

This has got to stop.

Just in case you missed it, last week both Dr. Seuss and Pepe Le Pew were cancelled for some stupid reason or another. In classic and predictable fashion, the spineless appeasers (but I repeat myself) immediately banned said books and cartoons.

If you haven't made the connection, Cancel Culture (and leftists in general) are BULLIES. This means they use (or threaten to use) physical force to get you to comply and to control you. It doesn't matter if they're after your lunch money, getting you to put your fist in the air, disavowing children's books that have been revered by parents and children for over 50 years, or a cartoon that is a parody of 40's and 50's culture. If the bullies can get you to go along, then they control you. After that, it's just a Milgram experiment to see how far you will go.

To be clear, there will be no end if we let them continue. Because these people are (emotionally) children, they are looking for limitations. But because they are physically adults, we think they are emotionally adults as well.

Children want and need to have boundaries if they are to mature into rational and considerate adults. They become terrors when they get to do whatever they want to do and no one tells them "No." Children don't have the capacity for self-discipline. They don't even have the conceptualization of discipline because their still-developing brain functions by default off the amygdala until their 20's Think of a candy store. An adult will go in and buy a measured amount of 1-3 kinds of candy and pay for it with their own earnings. A child will want all of everything, then want the parent to "do their thing" so the child can have it.

To prove my point, look at what these Leftist radicals actually want. Don't listen to the talking heads or the soundbites, listen to what the websites say and what the people themselves say. I mean destruction of the nuclear family, destruction of our system of government, destruction of any police forces, destruction of our economy, destruction of any kind of masculinity, installing a "nanny state" kind of government and so on. If you open your eyes, it is terrifying what these children want.

And there is only two ways a bully will stop. The first (and most unlikely way) is to wait for him to self-mature and realize he's doing a "bad thing." That could take years, and might never happen at all. The best, surest and fastest way to stop stop him is to stand up to him. Yes, your first time (or even the first several times) you will probably get beat. The first time you actually get to kick him in the 'nads, knock him down and then proceed to beat the snot out of him will be the last time you'll have to do it. Once the bully knows it isn't worth it because you're willing to wail on him, he will either leave you alone to pick on others, or stop bullying entirely.

Most people just want to be left alone. And they will only take so much SJW's in their face until people get fed up and punch them in the face. Metaphorically of course, unless they start the waltz.

If you're as sick of this as I am, read Alinsky's Rules for Radicals and do a Trump. For every ration of shit that comes your way, throw three rations back at them.

In concert with my deep dive “What is Capitalism,” I have decided to Fisk this article by Teen Vogue, What 'Capitalism' Is and How It Affects People.

Let’s skip the history lesson, and dive right to this part:

A capitalist nation is dominated by the free market, which is an economic system in which both prices and production are dictated by corporations and private companies…

No, no and no. Prices of non-essential goods and services are driven by consumer demand. This demand then determines production. If something is priced at $100, but most people would only pay $50 for it, the choices of the business is to find a way to sell it for $50, accept that very few people will pay $100 for it, or not make it at all. This is the bedrock of Capitalism, the law of supply and demand.

Believe it or not, it is the first people who buy the product at that $100 enable the economies of scale that brings the price down to $50. Just think about flat-screen TV’s. When they first came out, a 48” flat-screen cost $2,000. Today, they are $200. Not only are the $200 TV’s 10% of the price of the original, they have better resolution and has more features.

Then there’s this paragraph:

The kind of impact that capitalism has on your life depends on whether you’re a worker or a boss. For someone who owns a company and employs other workers, capitalism may make sense: The more profits your company brings in, the more resources you have to share with your workers, which theoretically improves everyone’s standard of living. It’s all based on the principle of supply and demand, and in capitalism, consumption is king. The problem is that many capitalist bosses aren’t great at sharing the wealth, which is why one of the major critiques of capitalism is that it is a huge driver of inequality, both social and economic.

That’s a lot to unpack. Let’s get this straight. “many capitalist bosses aren’t great at sharing the wealth,” but what about those Party members who allocate the resources in a Socialist economy? You would be a fool if you think they wouldn’t “take a cut of the action.” For any business that has employees, payroll is the first expense to be paid. Because no employees means no goods or services produced, which leads to no income and very quickly no company. As far as pay goes, you are paid directly proportional to how much income you generate. If the company receives $10/hr of income due to your work, does it make sense for them to pay you $15/hr? And you are not “stuck there.” You can improve your skills and as a consequence generate more income for the business and yourself.

Another thing is the owner is the person on the hook for everything. If the business closes, the owner is still responsible for the building and equipment leases, along with any the loans or other obligations. A good owner takes enough net profit to live off of and continually pours the rest back into the company.

If a worker wants to be paid more, they have to improve their skills. There’s always a high demand for people in the HVAC industry. You can get your certificate in 8-24 months, pay averages around $23/hr and as long as there are air conditioners and freezers, you have a job.

The downside is you’ll be outside a lot, winter and summer, in hot attics, or crawling under houses. You’ll be lifting heavy things constantly, dealing with angry customers and more. Most people don’t want to put up with that, so they don’t get the pay for it either.

We continue:

Capitalism’s supporters believe in several key points: Economic freedom leads to political freedom and having a state-owned means of production can lead to federal overreach and authoritarianism. They view it as the only sensible way to organize a society, insisting that alternatives like socialism, communism, or anarchism are doomed to fail. As former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, whose pro-capitalism stance is said to have devastated the British working class, once put it, “There is no alternative.”

The proper quotes by Thatcher which the author ignores are.

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples' money.

And

Let us never forget this fundamental truth: the State has no source of money other than money which people earn themselves. If the State wishes to spend more it can do so only by borrowing your savings or by taxing you more. It is no good thinking that someone else will pay - that 'someone else' is you. There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers' money.

I’ve done some research, and the earliest society that I found that practiced Socialist ideals (“From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”) was the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1620. Everyone gave the fruit of their labors to a “company store” then received equal shares. They starved under that system with everybody giving to and drawing from a “communal stock.” They didn’t start thriving until the colonists had control over the land and what they produced. This manifested as people growing food for themselves and could sell excess goods to others.

William Bradford, in his journal “Of Plymouth Plantation” related this:

So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other things to go on in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance) and ranged all boys and youth under some family.

My task for you Anti-Capitalist/Pro-Socialist readers, is to remark in the comments below, any group of people, large or small since 1620, who successfully practiced Socialist principles and didn’t eventually commit Democide. I know of one (not telling), and it didn’t outlive the founder.

To show Marx and Engles in such glowing terms like this shows you how much of a sell job this is:

The essential anti-capitalist argument is that “the hallmark of capitalism is poverty in the midst of plenty.” They say the immense suffering and violence that has been forced upon the laboring classes, the ruthless emphasis on profits over people, the proliferation of wage slavery — in which people have no choice but to sell their labor…

Think about it this way. In order to survive, a person must have:

1) Enough good food and clean water to be healthy and strong enough to be able to carry out the rest of this list.
2) Have a warm and safe place to sleep.
3) Have the tools to make labor easier (try chopping a tree down with a stone axe).
4) Stockpile food and fuel to get you through the winter.

Now, that’s what you need to survive. To accomplish those tasks alone is nigh impossible. You are doing what needs to be done from dawn to night. However, one mistake will probably kill you. A scratch can turn septic, a broken limb means a slow death from thirst or starvation. To flourish, you need time to rest from your labors and think about things, make things that will comfort and enhance your existence, etc. That takes a group of people, each doing different jobs and exchanging the fruits of their labor with each other.

That may sound Socialist, but it’s not. To be Socialist (meaning a command-controlled economy), “someone from the community” (a single person or committee, rarely the whole community) has to decide who will do what, what goods or services will be produced and how those goods will be distributed. Under a free-market Capitalist economy, each person decides what and how much they want to produce. If no one produces one thing that is needed, someone will see the need and demand for whatever “it” is, and make a profit.

And frankly, you’re going to be a “wage slave” under both Capitalism and Socialism, because someone has to make the goods and services no matter who’s in charge.

This is the part that chills me to my core:

There are many forms of socialism, but at its core, socialism is an economic system in which a whole community — not just bosses or private companies — control the means of production equally. It assumes that people are naturally cooperative, instead of competitive. The goal of socialism is an egalitarian society run by democratically elected representatives for the benefit of all in accordance with a set of collectively determined parameters; unlike under capitalism, industry and production is run by the state, and the acquisition of private property is seen as counterproductive. [Emphasis mine]

Consider this very, very carefully. The first piece of private property every person owns… is themselves. As long as you own yourself, you control what you do and what you produce. The dictionary definition of a slave is someone is “chattel” (property) of another person. The economic definition is a person who does not control or own the fruits of their labor. So, under the concept of “the owning of private property is counterproductive” means you don’t control your labor, you don’t control the fruits of your labor, and you don’t own yourself. You do what the State tells you to do, not what you want to do. As the article says,

“…a whole community — not just bosses or private companies — control the means of production equally.”

So now I have to ask, define “community.” Is that neighborhood, city, county, state or country? And define “control the means of production.” Does this mean everyone stops working and we hold a communal meeting to debate the merits of producing Windows phones instead of iPhones, along with the 378 other things the city produces? How long will that take? Days? Weeks? And while everyone is doing that, nothing gets done.

Maybe we just need to elect committees to make these decisions for us. Which would make the committee the de facto owners of the company and make them our bosses/leadership. In a free market, you vote for who your bosses are by applying to different companies.

Now I’m going to jump back to the beginning of the article. Right after the first quote I gave, there’s this point:

[Capitalism] and places a heavy focus on private property, economic growth, freedom of choice, and limited government intervention.

Notice how the author doesn’t mention “freedom of choice” or “limited government” as positive aspects of Socialism, just that private property is ‘counterproductive.’ I can only infer from these omissions that in a Socialist society, you don’t have freedom of choice or have a government that follows the will of the people.

And before you ask “What about Democratic Socialism?” it’s not a pig with lipstick, it’s a wild boar with lipstick. It’s a pig, with different markings, but a pig nonetheless. The only difference that I see between Socialism and Democratic Socialism is that you think you’re voting for who’s in charge of things. There will still be a committee for everything that needs a decision and you will still be a wage slave, with the major difference being if you don’t like your boss or the working conditions at your job, you can’t just quit without permission from the Labor Board (or whatever it would be called).

And the best argument against Socialism is expressed in one word: Democide.

One hundred million (100,000,000) people died by government action (or lack thereof) in Socialist countries last century. Most of the deaths were by starvation, but more than a few were executed for things like having ideas that weren’t approved by the Politburo.

To give you an idea about the hunger I’m talking about, imagine being so hungry that you make a literal mud pie and eat it. The bad news is, the dirt basically solidifies in your intestines blocking everything and you die, slowly and in tremendous pain. All because some asshole in Central Planning slipped a decimal point and your village got one truck of food for the month instead of the ten that it needed.

Korea is an interesting microcosm of Socialist vs. Capitalist ideals. It is a genetically homogenous gene pool (very little immigration) that has been under an A-B experiment for seventy years now. North Koreans are on average about 1.5” shorter than their cousins in the South. This is from multiple generations of near-starvation diets. Those people never got the nutrition they needed. And on the few occasions that food agencies personally gave food to the people of the villages, the Army came along and gathered the food up as soon as the aid workers were out of sight. And anyone who ate even a handful of food, you know, because they were hungry, they and their family were dragged out to the center of the village and executed to serve as an example.

And if Socialism becomes the law of the land in our time, we will probably not see atrocities like that, but our grandchildren will. It’s happened every time Socialism gets a stranglehold on a people.

Let that stew in your consciousness as you go to sleep tonight.

If you're like me right now, you are angry and scared. You solidly believe that this election was altered to make sure Biden won. You see Leftists and Democrats (but I repeat myself) advancing massive gun control, critical race theory, white supremacy, the altering of the language and more.

All I can say is I don't have all of the answers. Hell, I don't even have all of the questions. But I do know this:

Individual violence is not the answer. If someone gets it in their head that if they assassinate the president, or a cabinet member, or even a group of Congresscritters (or even all of them) to solve their perceived issue, it won't work. Let me explain why.

First of all, a meme I've had for a few years:

The problem lies not with the President (or whoever you want to aim for), but with almost all of us. Things did change somewhat once Trump took office, but what happened? He was met by resistance from not only Congress, but from the bureaucracy as well. Thousands and thousands of bureaucrats, who didn't like him did not carry out his orders. Or they "slow-walked" what Trump told them to do.

Another thing you may not recognize, any figurehead is, to one extent or another, a stalking horse. If there is someone controlling the president (or whomever you decide "to take out"), then if you manage to succeed, the person running the show just puts another pawn out for someone else to take out.

A third thing is, the system is "robust," which means if you could take out the president, vice-president and all 535 members of Congress, our system provides for everyone's replacement. We would have another president, VP and Congress in 90 days or less.

It still doesn't end there. Over 81 million people voted for Biden. But really, it was just about 123,000 votes spread out between in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia that swung the election. It took swinging 0.08% of the total votes from Trump to Biden in order to swing the election. Entirely doable. But that leaves the other 80+ million legitimate votes for Biden that weren't forged.

So my question is, who would you take out? Because you're not going to make a dent in changing anything until you've taken out at least several hundred thousand and probably a couple million people. And you can't miss a single one, because they'll just restart a whole new infection.

When armies meet on the field of battle, they have uniforms to tell each other apart. Not so here. You can't tell which side another person is on by just the bumper stickers on their car, or the words they use.

My bottom line here is, don't start or escalate. You don't have a clear target. When you do have a clear target, do what you need to do. In the words of Malcom Remolds in Firefly, "If someone tries to kill you, you try to kill 'em right back.".

I've said from the start, "If Biden is elected, he will be out of office by Easter." The three most likely ways he will be shown the door is a) Removed via the 25th Amendment, b) Resigns due to a scandal, or c) Resigns due to "health issues."

And the signs are all there. Pelosi was talking about the 25th Amendment option even before the 2020 election. The other day this article came out, Dozens of House Democrats Call on Biden to Give Up Sole Nuclear Launch Authority. Of course Kamala is already handling the President's duties interacting with foreign leaders as well. Old Joe is not helping things when he does things like his "stable Jesus" kind of speeches either.

Now, the article is couched with the quote, "The worry is not about Biden, but more about Trump or another future Trump-like president..." but the reality is, why are you worrying about a possibility 3 years in the future? They're not. They're worried about right now.

Now the good news.

We have (or at least had) a "no first strike" policy. IOW, the only time the US would launch our nuclear missiles would be as a response to an incoming nuclear strike. The fact that we are moving away from that policy to "consider the first-use of nuclear weapons in a wide set of circumstances" is terrifying. Here's more on it and the process.

I seriously hope that if a president even considers a nuclear first-strike the 25th Amendment would immediately be invoked. There is no scenario where if we opened that can of worms, we could not expect a nuclear retaliation from somebody.

If you remember, in 2007, Hugo Chavez, as President of Venezuela announced “All that was privatized, let it be nationalized.” Chavez was talking about nationalizing (government control) companies in the telecommunications and electricity industries. Of course, the major oil company was nationalized soon after.

If you were taught factual history instead of the whitewashed bullshit, you would have seen this is where Venezuela started declining. The bottom dropped out of their economy when the oil prices fell and the bureaucrats didn't know what to do. It started getting bad when Venezuela couldn't pump and refine enough oil for domestic use, let alone to the rest of the world.

You should know the rest of the story. In 2016-2017, Venezuelans lost an average of 19 pounds because they were starving. Bakers forced to make bread at gunpoint because they wanted to make pastries. Hyperinflation, worthless currency, massive refugee crisis and all that.

The other day, Bloomberg reported that Venezuela has given up on their "Socialist Utopia" and started privatizing businesses and industries again.

What this means is another example of failure to heap upon the dumpster fire known as "Socialism."

This is way late, I started it at the end of 2020, but I didn't get it to where I liked it until now. Better late than never...

In 2016, as a response to Trump's win, there were cries of "RUSSIAN COLLUSION!!!" The Pravdas (Pravda, a Russian word meaning "truth," was the major news paper of the Soviet Union, along with Izvestia, and my new term for the US Mainstream Media) breathlessly exclaimed every night for almost two years, "Evidence proving Trump stole the election will break soon!" My Leftist friends repeatedly told me, "The evidence that Trump is guilty is in the Mueller report!" but couldn't show me when I asked for page and paragraph.

Especially after I quoted the Executive Summary of the Mueller Report, pp.1-2:

Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities. [emphasis mine]

So then we come to November 2020, the first "It doesn't matter" election. I mean that in the "Now that the technology is in place and the methodology has been refined, in any close race the victor will invariably be the Democrat candidate" context. In the words of Joseph Stalin, "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." The graph below is of the January 5th 2021 Georgia Senate races, total vote count per hour. Notice the two Democrat candidates were trailing until about 11:15pm, then in the space of a few minutes, they jumped from far behind to just ahead. We can surmise that something fishy (i.e., it doesn't pass the smell test) to have both Democrat candidates each have 150,000 votes tallied and almost zero Republican votes in the same time span, which was about seven minutes.

When we look at the chart to see how fast the ballots are being counted, I see an average of about 18,166 votes total (all four candidates together) per minute. So, to have a sudden seven-minute surge of over 42,800 votes per minute, 99% Democrat and equally for both Democrats, if you don't go "hmmm. that's strange...", then you're a delusional Democrat to "see nothing wrong here."

Occam's Razor would indicate that "those who do the counting" saw the trends in votes per hour and issued an "adjustment" to put the Democrat candidates on top. Any investigation or recount would yield little difference, because, you know, the whole "We have investigated ourselves and have found that nomistakes were made" kind of result.

The point I want to bring up is that Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and other states all experienced similar jumps in vote tallies between Trump and Biden. While Pravda kept reporting "NO WIDESPREAD FRAUD FOUND!!!", you have to be cognizant of two things: Their choice of words and the fact that the Pravdas didn't look. In fact, Pravda either ignored the claims or actively explained them away.

The term "widespread" is a worthless word without a context. If we're talking across all 50 states, I'm sure no "widespread" fraud would be found. If we look at just Michigan, the answer would likely be "No" as well. Wayne County Michigan, which has Detroit? Now we could probably get some traction on that word.

Imagine this election as a Jenga tower. If you kick a log out one way, it falls in one direction. Tap on the one next to it and it falls the opposite direction. Those people who caused this alleged fraud to occur only had to target 8-10 counties out of the 2,000 counties in the country. They concentrated on inflating the vote count (which can be done in a variety of methods) in a deep Blue city in a battleground state to "bump up" the vote count so Biden won.

Along with the Georgia machine that counted some Trump votes as Biden votes. Then there was the "signature verification of mail-in ballots will not be conducted," and the "We will accept mail-in ballots up to three days after the law says we must stop accepting" issues in Pennsylvania, and a few other "minor incidents" like those. Kind of like the "mostly peaceful" rioters kind of thing.

What really separates 2020 from 2016 is the people. For the 2020 election, hundreds of people gave sworn depositions of their own free will of many "irregularities" that viewed individually seemed insignificant, but viewed in the aggregate pointed in a very specific direction. The 2016 election didn't have individuals voluntarily coming out to give sworn statements (that have a 5-10 year penalty of perjury if the statements are found to be lies) standing on their own pointing out irregularities, but 2020 did. Don't for a moment dismiss them out-of-hand either. Even if these people are never charged or face trial for Perjury (the penalty for lying under oath, which is what a sworn deposition is), their personal lives were wrecked. Disowned by their families, fired from their jobs, excoriated on social media, these people faced a severe price for speaking out.

Then we have what are known as the "Bellweather Counties." These are 20 counties scattered across the US, that have all been 100% accurate in voting for the winning president since 1980. In other words, these twenty counties all voted for the winning president, regardless of party, ten times in a row, from 1980 to 2016. Vigo County in Indiana has flubbed it twice since 1888, in 1908 and 1952. That's thirty-one correct, and two wrong, and the last sixteen presidential elections have been perfect, until 2020. Well, this time 19 of 20 got it wrong by voting for Trump. Given this record of two hundred correct choices with zero mistakes, I can understand changing demographics, or any of a dozen other reasons, for up to about half of them. To have 95% of these counties simultaneously screw this one election up is statistically improbable to several decimal places. Kind of like the "being struck by lightning, then getting hit by a meteor, only to have your body obliterated a minute later by an aircraft that crashed on top of you" odds.

And the Democrats are doubling down on this travesty by the House rolling out HR 1, the very misnamed "For the People Act of 2021." If I can drive a tractor trailer through the holes of the 2020 mail-in balloting, cruise ships will get though the holes in this "plan," and I mean that in the context of "Custer had a plan."

"This was the most secure election in US history!!!" Oh, pish posh.

In my copious free time I have managed to complete a couple of deep dives, What Are Laws? and What is Capitalism?. Enjoy.

Back when I was in Elementary school many, many years ago, the worst insult one child could throw at another on the playground was the term “Indian giver.” It was a serious accusation, not a term quickly or commonly bandied about like “Racist” and Nazi” are today. It was a literal “top of the mountain” insult and if proven, stuck with you for a while. This meant the other kid promised you something but then broke the promise. It was a real Scarlet Letter for an eight-year-old.

In case you missed it, on January 8th, Twitter banned Trump from their platform. This resulted in a lot of people “jumping ship” to Parler, where you weren’t banned merely for having a different opinion than the corporate staff. As a result, on January 9th, Parler became the most downloaded app in both the Apple’s AppStore and GooglePlay.

Then, within a few hours, both Apple and Google banned that app from their respective stores. At 11:59pm on January 10th, Amazon Web Services (AWS) stopped hosting the website and service entirely.

Parler has been down hard ever since. There’s a “placeholder” website back on the web to show you it’s there but there’s no user functionality for it. The bad news is the website code was specifically designed for AWS and is not easily copied over to another hosting service.

Now that I’ve set the table, let’s get into the meat of things.

First, in discussions I’ve had on this, my argument of “businesses can refuse service” (e.g., Masterpiece Cake Shop) was tossed in my face. To refresh you there, the man who owned MCS refused to make a custom cake for a same-sex couple. They were free to buy a standard cake, but the owner would not, under his personal religious morals, use his skills for them. Just to show he doesn’t selectively apply it, he also won’t do stuff like Halloween cakes either. I firmly believe MCS had the option to refuse to serve this couple’s request. He offered his cakes without his talents and referred them to other bakeries who would have been happy to serve them with customized cakes.

But there’s a big difference between MCS and AWS: a contract. AWS was under contract with Parler to provide web services.

The important parts are:

1. If AWS tells Parler that there’s “offensive content” that AWS doesn’t like on Parler, which started a 30-day clock for Parler to remove the stipulated content. The contract can be cancelled if the contested content is not modified or removed after 30 days.
2. If AWS cancels the contract for whatever reason, Parler has 30 days from that moment to move their website to another hosting service.

AWS notified Parler on January 8th and 9th of “offensive content violations,” on Parler. These were deleted within hours of Parler receiving the notification. By doing so, Parler held up its’ end of the contract. By removing the “bad” content, this act in contract terms “healed” the issue. So AWS had no viable complaints against Parler.

With no active issues, let alone any that had gone unresolved for 30 days, AWS still gave Parler only a thirty hour (not day) notice to get off AWS.

So this is where I start calling AWS an “Indian giver” because AWS promised a 30 day notice if they were going to cancel the contract and they broke that promise. What’s worse, there were no active grievances, only AWS’s animus over healed issues.

There are a lot of other issues and facets of this particular case that are not important to my point (namely the Sherman Antitrust act) and I’m not going to cover. As long as Justice is blind, Parler will most likely win and AWS will owe Parler lots of money for loss of income, reputational damage, penalties for breaking their contract and so on.

THIS is my point: By AWS making this a political/ideological decision instead of a profit/loss business decision, who from this point forward will want to do business with a company that breaks their contracts? Amazon got to where it is because they made win/win contracts with other companies. That built a solid reputation. From now on, many companies will look very hard at doing future business with AWS and Amazon overall because these companies will worry that they’ll get “Parlered” if AWS/Amazon takes a dislike to them.

Here’s the video that caught me up to speed on this:

I don't know how this is going to turn out. While I would prefer Trump to win, my goal is every legal ballot be counted a single time and no illegal or questionable ballots be counted. There is too much happening out of my view to guess which way it will turn out. But I can see that no matter who is sworn in on 1/20/2021, there will be a lot of bodies (metaphorical, hopefully not actual) strewn about in the aftermath.

It's beyond obvious that there has been a coordinated effort to alter the outcome of the presidential election. If you don't at least agree that something was going on, you are either totally uninformed, willfully uninformed or straight up delusional. Too many people (Democrats and Republicans) have made sworn statements (which carries a 5+ prison term for perjury if they lied in their statements) to dismiss this out of hand.

Here comes the fun part: Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell (both former federal prosecutors) have been in front of the press letting us know what's going on... without actually telling us anything. This is where it gets evil fun: The Pravdas (my new term for the US MSM). Have been demanding the "evidence" that these brilliant legal minds have, and dismissing them out-of-hand when the "evidence" is not forthcoming. Rudy is smart, because if this evidence is released to the press, the lawyers on the other side of legal battle will know what to expect and can work out how to minimize or even discredit the evidence used by Rudy.

If you never saw the TV series Perry Mason, it was a 50's and 60's courtroom drama about a lawyer. His client had been caught involved in a murder or other serious crime dead to rights. In court, the evidence all confirmed the guilt of Perry's client... Until Perry put someone on the stand and through brilliant legal maneuvering, got the person on the stand (to the sound of astonished gasps and the clutching of pearls) to confess in open court to have committed the crime. As long as the judge isn't in on the fix, I'm reasonably sure something like this will happen, within the boundaries of actual legal procedure.

There are a couple of ways for Trump to win:

1. Electoral College victory: The current EC count from states that have certified their elections as I write this is Trump 232 to Biden's 227. If Trump can get enough states to get him over 270, he wins. His electors can either come from the popular vote, or if the election cannot be certified in a state, the Legislature would select the EC voters.

2. Punt to the House: If neither Trump or Biden can get 270 votes (a side-effect of a state not certifying and the state legislature cannot/will not send their selected Electors), then, according to Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 (modified slightly by the 12th Amendment), the House will vote, with each State getting one vote and the Senate breaking a tie. In case you haven't looked at the map, there are more Red states than Blue States and the Senate is Republican controlled.

The EC vote (and the House vote if necessary) will happen on December 14th. That date cannot be postponed except maybe in case of a nuclear exchange, and I'm not even sure that would cause a postponement.

If Trump proves a coordinated effort by Democrats to rig the election, I sincerely hope that federal prosecutors will be very busy for the next few years putting people in prison for vote tampering.

No matter what happens, the Leftists will rip this country apart. If Trump wins, the riots and destruction we saw from "Summer of COVID" will pale in comparison. If Biden wins, he will be eased out by Easter through the 25th Amendment and Kamala will wreak vengeance on every Conservative, then by Executive action she will destroy as many freedoms as she can, the RKBA especially.

Most of you aren't programmers, so in basic terms the "!=" means "not equal," as in "Projected is not equal to Won."

To have heard so many people over the past four years lament about how the presidential election was "stolen" on 2016 (and in 2000, don't forget Bush v. Gore). that with the vote manipulation, ballot box stuffing and entire graveyards voting that nary a peep has been heard from the Left on this issue.

Here's one of many stories: "Election Watchdog Finds 350,000 Dead Registrants on Voter Rolls In 42 States." The question is, "How many votes were cast under these names?" We will likely never find out, as election monitors associated with Trump are prevented from any checking or verification of any votes.

Then you have Pennsylvania. Last year, the state legislature passed the "PENNSYLVANIA ELECTION CODE - OMNIBUS AMENDMENTS Act of Oct. 31, 2019, P.L. 552, No. 77" which amended the Pennsylvania Election Code (P.L.1333, No.320).

Section 1302.1 (8) of the Pennsylvania code is amended as follows:

(8)  No absentee ballot under this subsection shall be counted which is received in the office of the county board of elections later than [eight o'clock P.M. on the day of the primary or election] the deadline for its receipt as provided in section 1308(g).

Going to the "PENNSYLVANIA ELECTION CODE" Act of Jun. 3, 1937, P.L. 1333, No. 320, we find in section 1308(g) (ii):

(ii)  An absentee ballot cast by any absentee elector as defined in section 1301(i), (j), (k), (l), (m) and (n), an absentee ballot under section 1302(a.3) or a mail-in ballot cast by a mail-in elector shall be canvassed in accordance with this subsection if the absentee ballot or mail-in ballot is received in the office of the county board of elections no later than eight o'clock P.M. on the day of the primary or election.

There was a bit of an uproar when the PA Supreme Court said "Friday after the election is good enough." There's a challenge to that in the hands of SCOTUS right now, and "supposedly" the ballots received are being held separate from the ballots that did make it in time. There is a hard choice to be made here. Because there is no severability clause in this law, the clear choice before SCOTUS is between "not counting the ballots received past the deadline" or "invalidate the entire law, and thusly all mail-in ballots." The PA Supreme Court has no authority to rule on this, especially the way they did. Look up Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution about who sets the laws for elections (and it's not the Judiciary).

Then there was the kerfuffle over Mail-in ballots. To be secure, there's two envelopes securing the ballot. the outer one is used by the USPS for delivery. The inner one is first scanned and the signature is verified electronically to validate the ballot. Except in PA. There, a ballot received is a vote cast, they don't care who signed it. Don't believe me? Pa. Supreme Court rules mail-in ballots will count even if signatures don't match. Don't blame the Court, this was a failing in the law as written, so I believe the Court ruled correctly.

Then we have stories like this: UPDATED: Analysis: Five Milwaukee wards report 89% turnout in 2020 presidential vote; Biden nets 146K votes in city. Since I was a teenager, voter participation in elections have been in the 30-55% participation range. To have 300+ districts reporting voter participation of 60% and 120 districts reporting 80% or higher is statistically improbable to an absurd degree. Not impossible, but there's a better chance that someone gets hit by a meteor and lightning at the same time than any district reporting 80% participation, let alone 120 of them. The one district that reported 125% had a total of five votes. That means one voter more than the number of registered voters. I'll let that one slide.

Between everything above, plus things like inaccurate voter rolls that have thousands of deceased people still listed as on the voter rolls, there is enough smoke to suggest a through review of the entire election process in ALL states.

Personally, the simpleist way to minimize voter fraud is everyone shows up on election day, where they show acceptable Identification, and before they vote they dip their finger in an inkwell. It visibly stains their finger and is not easily removed in the few hours the polls are open. It will wear off in a couple of days with no ill effects. No databases to hack, no double (triple, etc.) voting and so on. You can show twelve ID's with different names all you want, that ink on your finger says you voted.

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No, this isn't a law firm, they are three Liberal journalists with some very rare commodities: integrity and journalistic standards.

Up until recently, journalists were supposed to be (but not always) neutral observers of events, who would journal their observations, then report them to an audience who was educated about government and the affairs of the world. The journalists presented their observations and let the reader/viewer make up their own minds about the subject. When I was growing up, we had three TV networks. I don't remember who was on ABC (Dad never watched ABC), but NBC had Huntley and Brinkley, while CBS had Walter Cronkite. These were men of integrity and had journalistic standards, which included never letting their own political views shade or distort the news they reported on.

Today, "journalists" have the mindset of "we have the responsibility to shape the public to our opinions, not tell them the facts." Sadly, they are very effective in that task. Trump's achievements include (but are not limited to) setting governmental policies that resulted in a 50+-year-low minority unemployment, negotiates multiple deals bringing peace to the Middle East that 70 years of "diplomats" have failed to do, helped the United States become a net exporter of energy instead of the biggest importer, and got fellow NATO allies to share the cost of defense instead of letting the US spend the vast majority of resources to do so. If the press has reported on any of these at all, it's in the vein of "No Social Distancing During Signing of Peace Accord Between Israel, Bahrain."

I am glad to report that there are Liberal journalists out there who have upheld that foregone thought of "journalistic integrity," namely Glenn Greenwald, Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi. Glenn recently resigned from The Intercept, a news source that he co-founded. As part of his contract, he had a "no editorial oversight" and an "absolute right to publish." The "no editorial oversight" means that no editor (the gatekeepers who decide what gets and doesn't get published) could "spike" Matt's articles and keep them from being published. The "right to publish" means that the news outlet the reporter works for owns everything the reporter writes on their time. So, the reporter can't write an article written on News Corp A's time that was spiked and sell it to News Corp B and have B publish it.

Glenn had written a story on the recent Biden scandal, and his own company, The Intercept, refused to publish it despite the stipulations in his contract. In response, Glenn did the only thing open to a man with integrity, he quit and started his own news site (again).

Bari Weiss was brought on to The New York Times in 2016 to help diversify the points of view and reporting at the paper due to they got the 2016 election so wrong. She quit last year, citing in part:

But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else. [emphasis mine]

She was harassed, browbeaten, ostracized and ignored. Like Glenn, Bari kept her integrity and resigned with her self-respect and journalistic standards intact.

Matt Taibbi is a honey badger, he just don't give a shit. When I used to listen to my local morning DJ's Drake and Zeke on my way to work in the morning, they often interviewed Taibbi on various articles or books he wrote. While he hasn't quit in a blaze of glory like Greenwald or Weiss, he has integrity. His politics does not limit the direction he points his pen, a real journalistic flamethrower.

So, a sincere kudos to all of them, you have my respect and admiration. We need journalists who put their ethics and integrity ahead of their politics, not the other way around. Check them out, I added Greenwald and Taibbi's sites to by link roll, Bari is only writing books now.