The Grater of Empires State.

 'LOSER STATE'

 Governor of New York -- The Empire State -- Democrat Kathleen Hochul argues the political targeting of Republican Donald Trump by a rogue prosecutor and Judge was a "One and Done" deal -- in effect admitting that it was political. Kevin O'Leary, Chairman of O'Leary Ventures, begs to differ. There were no victims in the case and seeing a radical leftist prosecutor jump to the defense of international bankers would be amusing but for the likely "decline and economic fallout" that follows as money flows out of the city and state to fairer lands. 

If the judge had dismissed the case instead of (rather gleefully, it seems) slapping The Donald with a $355 million fine (and 9 percent interest), the "one and done" argument may have gained some traction.  Not now. It used to be "the process is the punishment" but now the punishment is followed by more punishment. A corrupt politician can get his loser son-in-law -- let's call him Hunter -- a high-paying job by threatening a businessman with the "Trump Treatment."  It would be an equity hire. You see, the corrupt pols now have equity in your business -- otherwise known as a protection racket.

Making small fortunes in New York

Scotty Rants

Here's Why America Just Went Bankrupt and All Our Savings are Gone!!!

Scotty Kilmere's been an auto mechanic for 50 years and his car videos can be quite entertaining, informative, and humorous. Apparently, he found out about the National Debt. It's 34 Trillion dollars, which is 34,000 Billion dollars (trillion is just another word for "many"). He says it's unsustainable, on account of how they keep running it up by a couple trillion every year. He's not too fond of electric cars, either.

Foreign nations sell us cars (and steel and lots of other stuff) and buy US government debt. They call this an "industrial policy." DC politicians like this because they can dish out money and not raise taxes. Wall Street likes this because they can sell foreigners our assets. Banks like this because the dollar is the world trade currency backed by American Real Estate -- which foreigners can buy as a safe haven when things go bad. It's good for everyone but American workers.

He's down on Capitalism, which he confuses with stupidity, and calls Communist China a Capitalist nation. Maybe, but it is not a free-market economy. They practice Crony Capitalism or, if you prefer, State Capitalism (Fascism). 

The Modern Madame Missionary

Drinker's Chasers - Oh No! She-Hulk Season 2 Cancelled

The crowd discusses the difference between the classic "She-Hulk" comic book and the Disney+ attempted "feminist sitcom" reinterpretation that fell flat.

I can do anything better than you

I didn't watch the show or read the comics, which allows me to be objective. In my objective opinion, the Disney+ creators (Jessica Gao et. al.) are doing missionary work for the woke religion.

Traditionally, missionaries go to where their fellow believers are to get money and then go to where the heathens are to make converts. Repeat as needed. Such inventions as the internet, zero interest rates, and rampant financial speculation make it possible to do this at scale and at a distance (limiting risk and discomfort while improving pay) -- but the basic approach remains.

For quite some time the Wealth of the USA has been concentrated in the hands of women -- the sort of fact that is sometimes called "an inconvenient truth," but not in this case since it is never mentioned. Earlier in that period, their wealthy Husbands would die at sixty (thank you, big Tabaco) and they would live to 85, sipping red wine and attending charitable functions. Their considerable wealth, however, would be managed by men to produce the best returns -- while often promoting the interests of men (expanding industry, for example). These days, it is managed by women, oftentimes to promote the interests of women (specifically, the daughters of the well-to-do).  This is labeled "social justice" and has acquired the trappings of a secular religion combating an evil "them" that strongly resembles working-class white males who read comics (it's where the heathens are). When Steve Jobs (the scion of a working-class family) died his widow became a modern-day Joan D'Arc -- a fortune being mightier than the sword. Multiply this a thousandfold and we get all this ESG nonsense.

Money, Money...Money, Money

It's all good until you make a loss -- and during a period when the Fed was underpinning an economy rife with speculation, it was all good. When the missionary work starts shrinking your assets (and no one likes a shrinking asset), the whole approach deserves a re-think.

Call me Chato has a more professional take.

Better or Badder?

Saving Myself

 A while back I decided that the comments I spread around the internet display such genius that I should start saving them. So I put a folder on my desktop and labeled it "Comments." It contains one. Here it is:

The United States has a two-party system: There is a Responsible Party and an Irresponsible Party.

The Responsible Party is easy to identify. When something goes wrong, the Responsible Party is the party responsible -- either individually or as a group (as in "it's society's fault"). The Irresponsible Party is never responsible for the problem (when Flint's water went bad, was it the responsibility of the water department? Why ask). However, the Irresponsible Party will freely offer solutions that the Responsible Party should finance and implement (while ignoring the name-calling, the selfish bastards).

Members of the Irresponsible Party are more difficult to identify because they often look responsible and act responsibly where their own lives are concerned. They can push for a course on Critical Race Theory and non-racist athematic in public schools while sending their own kids to private schools. The typical criminal is a member of the Irresponsible Party but so is the prosecutor that releases a criminal with a high probability of offending again. Neither is responsible for what happens.

Members of the Irresponsible Party are often idealists who will join an organization with no intention of furthering that organization's mission. Indeed, their intention is to re-purpose the institution and move it in a different direction, to basically undermine it and fundamentally transform it. Their actions are deliberate, but often lack deliberation. Having identified with a cause on a personal level, questioning the wisdom of their actions becomes a highly personal attack on their self-worth. This applies to the idealist. The Sociopaths, who hope to take over when society fails and falls, don't practice self-deceit, just deceit straight-up.

I was thinking of making this a book with reasoned arguments and examples and footnotes and stuff.

A current example is Hamas -- an irresponsible party -- and Israel (guess which role it fills).

Why are Progressives so Obsessive?

Leeja Miller, the fast-talking left-wing lawyer on YouTube, wonders why conservatives are so obsessed with Trans Kids. I think"Kids" is the operative word here. Progressives love to launch society-wide social experiments and then walk away from the awful results (The Great Society Program an attempted to recreate the "New Deal" of the Great Depression but instead recreated the Great Depression in the industrial heartland). The left-wing slogan "Forward" means leave wreckage in our wake as we blissfully sail into calm waters that will become storm-tossed as we arrive.

The old Progressive slogan for taking governmental control was "fight childhood hunger" (resulting in widespread obesity among the young, and, as a result of that "wide-spread," the Body Positive Movement).  Now they tell us, "A baby's sex at birth is just God guessing."

I can remember when "low self-esteem" caused people to steal, rape, murder, or be irritating at work. For about a decade, we were all supposed to work on, not only improving our own self-esteem but everyone else's as well. So, when being mugged, you should try to make your mugger realize his true worth as a human being -- but carefully, in a way that won't get you killed.  

Then there was the "Childhood Recovered Memory of Abuse" fad.  Here, a rare phenomenon -- where a child is molested and represses all memory of the horrible event -- was said to be quite widespread. So adults all over the place began blaming their lousy character traits (but not the good ones) on their discovery -- often with the help of a therapist -- that they were abused as a child. This worked until the children of these adults began accusing these adults of abuse.  At that point even PBS turned against the movement.

In a political sense, the left suffers from "Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy."  They are so fond of getting credit for being on the right side of history and wanting to solve society's problems that they are blind to the fact that they cause many of the problems they claim to want to solve (i.e. San Francisco's Homelessness).

How Reagan Ruined Everything

Fast-talking lawyer Leeja Miller makes the case against Ronnie. It's not the massive concentration of power in Washington D.C. that's the problem: it's the partial slowdown to that process caused by RR. It reminds me of how the Democrats successfully ran against Herbert Hoover for fifty years. Trying the same trick with Reagan might not work as well.

Lawyers concentrate on winning the argument rather than solving the problem, because by winning the argument they have solved the problem -- their problem, which is winning the argument. Unfortunately, despite all the argument-winning, the crisis persists -- an underfunded and underpowered government sector.

I remember when the Federal government had to function on a meager nine-hundred billion dollars a year -- no wonder it couldn't make everything affordable in a sustainable manner! It was argued that by increasing that amount to a mere one trillion (a "more" that actually sounds like "less") we would solve this persistent funding shortfall. But did it? No! Now some people actually argue that seven trillion a year should be enough (that's 7,000 billion dollars). Really? With so much persistent want in the country (especially among lawyers and lobbyists), how will that solve the problem? To hell with trickle-down! I'm for tinkle-upon economics! Who doesn't want to feel that warm flow of federal dollars running down their back?

The Winner of the 2024 US Presidential Election Is...

Peter Zeihan makes his prediction for 2024 and he sees a rematch between Trump and Biden with a Biden win because swing voters such as Peter will go for the Democrats.

In 2016 I did not want Trump to get the nomination (I thought he was a moderate Democrat) but I told friends that the media did. By attacking Trump they could raise his numbers among the Republican base that hates the left-leaning media.  Meanwhile, their attacks would turn Peter Zeihan against Trump for the general election, ushering in large Democratic majorities. There weren't enough Peters, so it didn't quite work out that way.

There is an insider/outsider dynamic in presidential races -- which is why governors often make good candidates. In 2016 Trump was an outsider. In 2020 he stood onstage with a bunch of Washington insiders while the nation closed down -- plus it's hard for any president to escape responsibility for things that go wrong, even if it's caused by his political enemies (ie, mostly peaceful riots, etc).

For 2024 we see the media and the Democrats running the 2016 strategy. They've turned the race into the quintessential outsider running against the quintessential insider. The American people face only one political question: do you want everything in the nation run by a selected group of people in Washington D.C., plus their partners on  Wallstreet, in Silicon Valley, and that whole Hollywood/Davos globalist "you will own nothing and be happy or else" community.  I call this result "feudalism with the right people in charge." All the other issues are there to disguise that central issue. If Trump and the Republicans stay focused on that one question, they stand an excellent chance.

Looking for a New Thermometer

The leaders of Argentina and Brazil hope to create a common currency to break the trade-denominated link to the US dollar. Joe Blogs compares their efforts to the creation of the Euro around the turn of the century.

Historically, most Euro participants lean towards "easy money" but Germany, having suffered from hyperinflation, is a hard-money, hard-nut to crack. That isn't the case here. Argentina currently suffers from roaring inflation -- not for the first, second, or third time -- which has tanked the value of their currency in dollar terms. Brazil has a similar record. Since their bilateral trade is largely denominated in dollars, this is highly inconvenient for businessmen and, more recently, politicians. The two countries are suffering from inflation fever and the leaders want a new thermometer in lieu of treating their policy problems. Even in the Euro's case, there was a financial crisis in the area because some countries did not follow the program they signed onto (ie limiting budget deficits and so on).

The proposed currency union is a bit like fixing a leaky roof. It's a good idea. What's a bad idea is trusting the job to "roofers" who cause more leaks than they fix. Meanwhile, the bewildered homeowners at the job site find half of their valuables have disappeared before the job is done. When they complain it is explained that the poor result is all the fault of people who live on another continent thousands of miles to the north.

Courting the Children on Climate

In their efforts to gain ever more power, the left seems to favor those who either have yet to reach "the age of reason" (Greta Thunberg, the students at Yale Law) or are well beyond it (Joe Biden). Apparently, they find "a little thinking" among their agents a threat to the movement. So now they have created a court case attacking Montana land management while using children as a shield and wielding the aliments of two-year-olds like Galadriel's sword. You see, the world's going to end before they can vote, on account of their living in a climate-controlled home with hot and cold running water where they don't have to take a trip to the outhouse when it's 40 below and their pee freezes before it hits the ground.

I'm thinking this is a left-wing managed and staged court proceeding so the people being sued won't put up much of a defense and the jury will be overwhelmingly "for-the-children" (if the members have recently moved to Bozeman from Berkeley, that would be a plus). In fact, I would argue for a jury of their peers, which would mean mental ages of no more than six years.

Unfortunately for the Left, a stout defense would throw much doubt on the validity of "man-made climate change." It could even examine the considerable damage caused by the power-grabbing (not power-generating) programs the movement champions. Personally, I think the actions of the adults involved (if I may give their court filings a twist) harm the children's physical and psychological health and safety; interfere with family and cultural foundations and integrity; and cause economic deprivations -- not the state of Montana. Therefore, their suit will likely target fellow-traveling bureaucrats who want to lose, and by losing, win.

Children's Climate Trial