Sunday, April 13, 2025
Saturday, April 12, 2025
Juror #2 - Max Movie
Juror #2 - Official Trailer - Warner Bros. UK & Ireland
Warner Bros. UK & Ireland
Murder trail in Georgia. Jury trial, which means jury deliberations. Except the girl wasn't murdered by her boyfriend, she was hit a passing car, in the rain, by one of the jurors, juror #2. It's kinda slow paced and tedious. Juror #2 is in a bit of a bind, especially when his lawyer tells him they'll send him to prison if he cops to the crime. Pretty sure that's bad advice.
Update a couple hours later: the first video I included wouldn't play here. I had clicked on Share and it had put the trailer in my blog, but it wouldn't play. I go back and look at Embed under Share and it tells me embedding is disabled. Huh. So I used this one.
Friday, April 11, 2025
Quote of the Day
From The Scratching Post:
Tariffs As An Example
In the tariff wars, Trump said he wanted to eliminate trade deficits. In retrospect, I think even Trump knew that was idiocy. However, it was way beyond where he was willing to accept. Everyone took him at his word and went into spasms of horror.
Incidentally, I did, too. That's what I mean when I say it's very hard to escape the zeitgeist generated by the Super Smart Set Who Don't Actually Know Much Of Anything And Who Have Been Wrong About A Lot Of Things For Decades (SSSWDAKMOAWHBWAALOTFD).
King of the Hill
 |
| Hank Hill, family, and Boomer? |
It's freaky how much these people resemble the characters on King of the Hill TV show. Of course, it could all be faked. I choose to think it's real. Looking on Wikipedia to see if they have anything to say about this photo (they don't), and found this absurdly long article about the character Hank Hill.
Cock O' The North
Just looking around the industrial parts of town, I was overwhelmed by the amount of steel that goes into these machines, structures, raillines, tanks and towers, and that's just one town. Every town in the industrialized world is built on a zillion tons of the stuff.
 |
| U. S. Steel Production vs. Imports |
U. S. Steel Production peaked in the 1970s. Since then it has fallen by half.
So why did this happen? Why did the U.S. go from a steelmaking powerhouse to an also-ran? As usual, there are a bunch of competing explanations — import competition, bad management choices by steel companies, and unions raising wages to uncompetitive levels. But while these were factors, the biggest reason the U.S. steel industry went into terminal decline was that we stopped building things that used lots of steel. - Noahpinion
Thursday, April 10, 2025
Federal Deficit
 |
| Federal Deficit |
This is graph is a little odd, looks like everything is going down when everyone knows the debt is going up. Now look at the scale along the left hand edge and you will see that zero is at the top. So now it makes a little more sense. It's a little hard to read at the scale here. Click to embiggenate and that should make if legible.
Anyway, notice the green line, the one that descends the fastest, the one that goes from 750 billion to 2750 billion in three months. What's that all about? That was the $2 Trillion economic rescue package passed by Congress back in 2020. Thanks COVID lockdown.
Commercial Real Estate
 |
| Destiny USA |
I don't have much to say about this except that this incident is just the tip of the iceberg. This disaster has been a long time in the making.
Ten Big Rivers
 |
| 10 Big Rivers |
I don't know about the plastic, this poster might be true, but I thought the way it showed these ten rivers is pretty cool, especially the Niger. I had no idea it curved around until it almost touches the coast. Must be some mountains there.
The sources of the Niger River, the Gambia River, and the Senegal River are all found in the Guinea Highlands. - Wikipedia
This Morning's Chuckle
 |
| Aleksey Zubritsky (left), Sergey Ryzhikov (center), and Jonny Kim before blasting off at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, April 8, 2025. © Aleksey Filippov / Sputnik |
From RT (formerly Russia Today, also known as 'Putin's mouthpiece' according to the Neocons, whoever they are):
I am wondering how long it will be before Zelensky is crushed like the bug he is. I expect he will wait until Russian tanks are rolling down his street before he decides to take the Zelenion dollars he has stuffed into his pockets and bolt for the exit. I don't expect him to stand his ground and wait for the hammer of doom, but one can only hope.
Wednesday, April 9, 2025
Life of Pi - Keller Auditorium
Life of Pi on Broadway
NewYorkTheater
The kid's story is that there was a tiger in the lifeboat with him. What actually happened (for a fictional version of actual) was pretty horrific, so you can understand how this experience could have deranged him. Anyway, the tiger's name was Richard Parker. Wikipedia gives us Martel's (the author) reasoning:
Richard Parker and shipwreck narratives
The name Richard Parker for the tiger was inspired by a character in Edgar Allan Poe's nautical adventure novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838). Richard Parker is a mutineer who is stranded and eventually cannibalized on the hull of an overturned ship, and there is a dog aboard who is named Tiger. Martel also had another occurrence in mind in the famous legal case R v Dudley and Stephens (1884), where a shipwreck again results in the cannibalism of a cabin boy named Richard Parker, this time in a lifeboat. A third Richard Parker drowned in the sinking of the Francis Spaight in 1846, with a cabin boy cannibalized during an incident involving the same ship in 1835. "So many victimized Richard Parkers had to mean something", Martel suggested.
Fun with Numbers
Math puzzle – Can YOU find the area?
Math Queen
Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Lake Como, Italy
 |
| Power boat on Lake Como, Italy |
Lake Como is a lake of glacial origin situated in northern Italy. It is the third-largest lake in Italy, depth exceeds 1,300 feet and it is the deepest European lake outside of Norway. Lake Como's beauty has long attracted the affluent, serving as a favored summer retreat for aristocrats and wealthy individuals since Roman times. - extracted from Wikipedia
Several movies have been shot here (from Google):
- Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002): The romantic hideaway of Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala, including scenes filmed at Villa del Balbianello, is a visually stunning location.
- Casino Royale (2006): The James Bond film features Villa La Gaeta and Villa del Balbianello, with the climax playing out on Lake Como's shores.
- A Month by the Lake (1995):This romantic drama, starring Uma Thurman and Alessandro Gassman, is set at a Lake Como resort.
- Ocean's Twelve (2004): The second installment of the Ocean's series sees the gang stopping at Villa Erba on Lake Como.
- Murder Mystery (2019): The Netflix film starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston features Villa Erba as a chase destination.
- The Pleasure Garden (1925): A silent film by Alfred Hitchcock, with scenes shot at Comacina Island.
 |
| Lake Como, Italy |
Monday, April 7, 2025
Guns
Why Civilians carry Weapons in the streets
Marcio Tour Guide Israel
I kinda think Israel has the right idea, I especially like the bit about how everyone is trained in the use of firearms. Don't think we could get away with making it mandatory here, but having firearms classes available in all high schools might be a good idea. Might have fewer fools shooting someone by accident.
MIRV
Couple of scary photos I came across yesterday.
 |
| Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) hitting their targets during a ICBM test as seen from a P-3 Orion |
I suspect the 'long-exposure' was no more than a few seconds. I mean these warheads are coming in a super-, maybe even hyper-, sonic speeds.
Bosch: Legacy - Amazon Freevee Series
Bosch: Legacy | All New Series | Season 1 Trailer
Amazon Freevee
Even though we have Amazon Prime, this show still subjects us to advertisements. There aren't too many and they aren't too long, so it's not too bad. Still annoying, though.
I generally like Bosch, but I'm a little tired of his daughter. This show puts more emphasis on the suffering of the victims and less on catching bad guys than the original, but it's tolerable, and my wife really likes Bosch, so I sip my beer and watch the drama unfold. I do like Mo, Bosch's hacker. His hair and beard are the scruffiest, so he is not particularly attractive, but he cool, calm, collected, and pulls off some good stunts. We also get an inside look at how some criminals operate, and it's not all illegal drugs and murder. More everyday kind of crimes, crimes that don't make the news, but have a big impact on the victims.
This time we have Honey Chandler, former defense attorney, running for district attorney against the corrupt, liberal guy who has brought so much misery to Los Angeles. Her biggest problem is cleaning up the corruption in the police department. She made her name winning big awards from the police department for civil rights violations, so she is not a fan favorite in a large part of the cop shop. On the other hand, her opponent is hated for early release of criminals and his failure to prosecute them, so she has a fair shot at winning the election.
This is another one of those series that is in the midst of release, so only a few of the episodes are available.
Copycat Killer - Netflix Series
Copycat Killer | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix Asia
Bit of a horror show. The villain is so nasty that I despised him.
We don't have just one psychopath, we have a gang of them being directed by the psycho in charge.
He is a master manipulator, He works in TV news, so he knows all about propaganda and how to prey on people's emotions and he uses these techniques very effectively.
He has a line just after the 30 minute mark in episode 9 where he says something like the truth is whatever we say it is, and whoever tells the most convincing story and gets it out there first is going to be the winner.
10 Episodes, 1 hour each.
Graveyard: - Netflix Series
Graveyard: Season 2 | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix
Woman cop gets promoted to head up a special unit dedicated to investigating murders of women. Seems to be a small but on-going problem in Turkey. Half a million people die in Turkey every year. Honor killings of women may reach 500 in a year, so one of every one thousand deaths is an honor killing.
Turkish society is split between the way of Western Civilization and the old way as practiced by the Mohammedans. Anyway, it means our girl has a tough row to hoe but so far (we've watched one episode) she's doing okay.
This whole investigating-honor-killings is an unpopular experiment. As such, it's very existence is fraught with risk. Our girl gets her promotion, but for office space her group gets a corner of the archives in the basement, a space otherwise known as 'the graveyard'. It's where all the dead cases come to rest. Her crew consists of:
- the archivist, a guy who has been there forever and is due to retire in a couple of years,
- a macho cop who assaulted a couple of other cops,
- a forensic specialist who insists of giving a long explanation of the historical significance of each bit of technology he uses, and
- a tall, thin, tattooed, tough chick who has mastered computer hacking.
The hacker is not actual police, she and our lead girl already know each other. Macho cop gets a scene in every episode where is berating a suspect during interrogation. I can see someone getting this worked up occassionally, but this guy delivers his deranged copper persona on demand.
There first suspect, Ahmet, is the victim's brother. They locate him fighting in a cage match. He was convicted of killing his sister. Turns out it was actually the father, and his son just took the fall for it.
Next suspect is big, macho blow-hard. Our girl arrests him on live TV while he is being interviewed. Turns out that while he is a scumbag, he didn't kill the girl.
Last, and guilty, suspect is the husband of woman who our murder victim befriended. They have no evidence against him so they have to let him go. They give him a ride to his house, but standing in front of his house is Ahmet. The cops have told the suspect who this guy is, so he is very reluctant to get out of the car, Eventually he does. But Ahmet does not know who this guy is or even that he is a suspect. Never-the-less, the killer freaks out, gets back in the car and tells our girl he wants to change his statement.
In episode two we have a fancy new phone that uses a biometric fingerprint scanner, so not only do you need someone's fingerprint, it needs to be from a live finger. In this case, the phone belonged to our murder victim. In order to unlock it, the cornner applied shock paddles to the corpse and gave it a jolt. Evidently this animated the finger long enough that they were able to unlock the phone. There is a curious bit of technology in every episode.
Season 1 has (4) two-hour episodes.
Season 2 has 8 episodes, which is basically the same as Season 1, they've just cut the two-hour episodes into two parts that are one-hour long each.
Dalah: Death and the Flowers
Dalah: Death and the Flowers | Official 4K Trailer | Netflix Premiere February 27
Nitflixz
The very successful son and daughter from two prominent families are set to be married, but the groom gets himself killed the night before, with his fiance's gun. She runs away and hides.
Our hero is the lady proprietor of a flower shop who was hired to provide flowers for this wedding. The murder occurs in her warehouse. Turns out that umpteen years ago she got fucked over by the two families and she has worked her way into this position bent of revenge. She is very quiet, doesn't say much, but manages to get what she came for.
Mogura - Netflix Series
従うべきは、法か自分か🚨警視庁麻薬取締課 MOGURA ｜豪華ラッパーキャスト解禁🔥1/9(木)23時開始
ABEMA ドラマ【公式】
Google mogura and Google responds:
- The word "mogura" (土竜) is the Japanese word for "mole".
- Based on real events, narcotics officer Shokichi Izanagi goes undercover to infiltrate a group of hip-hop artists suspected of drug trafficking.
There is as least one other show about the same real-life events.
The pacing is a little different from what we get in a top-shelf crime thriller, it has some pauses and awkward moments, but it moves along. Our hero is a 30 year old cop who's gotten in trouble with the higher ups, so he has been shuffled off to narcotics enforcement. While his new, female boss seems to be a straight arrow, it turns our she is in cahoots with the mayor and who is a class A sleazeball. In public he is proclaiming his war of drugs while in private he is the local drug kingpin.
.png) |
| Lincoln Mark V Convertible |
What every successful Japanese rapper-come-gangster should have. This car shows up in Episode 3 at the 11:40 mark. It must be custom, because Lincoln never made a Mark V convertible.
The picture is a screenshot. Funny how it looks bright and shiny in the show and so very dim here.
Woman of the Dead: Season 2 - Netflix Series
Woman of the Dead: Season 2 - Official Trailer (2025)
IGN Movie Trailers
Blum, the lady undertaker in an Austrian ski resort, gets caught up in murder and mayhem, again. This time it's a ring of snuff-film aficionados who believe she has a nasty-ass video. She doesn't, but they are willing to use extreme measures like murder and kidnapping to get it back. The show doesn't dwell on the snuff-film business, they just give you enough to show you that these people are some sick fucks. Most of the show has her running around, trying to solve the case while not getting arrested by the police, some of whom are rotten.
 |
| Ducati Monster 797 |
She rides this motorcycle, or one very similar to it. This one has been customized by Angry Lane.
When No One Sees Us - Max Series
When No One Sees Us | Official Trailer | Max
Max
When I heard that the missing soldier's car was discovered in Algeciras, I got to wondering how far it was from the Morón Air Force Base, so, map.
The show is intriguing, the only clues we have as to what happened are paper thin, but scrap by scrap they are piling up. Unfortunately, this is another of those shows that is in the midst of release, so only about half of the episodes are available now.
The show is intriguing, the only clues we have as to what happened are paper thin, but scrap by scrap they are piling up. Unfortunately, this is another of those shows that is in the midst of release, so only about half of the episodes are available now.
The Cleaning Lady - Max Series
The Cleaning Lady (FOX) Trailer HD - Elodie Yung series
TV Promos
Cambodian woman doctor from the Philippines is staying in Las Vegas with her sister waiting for her son to be admitted to a gene therapy treatment program. Her visa has expired so she is working with her sister as a cleaning lady, since that is only kind of work they can get since they are both illegal aliens.
She is cleaning the restrooms in a warehouse when a gangster is shot dead on the premises. She is discovered and offers to clean up the mess and talks herself into a new job, working for a gangster.
The show is basically bi-polar: on one hand we have the precarious existence of illegal aliens trying get by, working menial jobs in Las Vegas, along with the heartbreak of having a five year old kid who is liable to die at any moment. I supposed some people enjoy this, me, I've had enough. On the other hand we have our girl stuck between working for a bunch of Armenians gangsters and the FBI trying to use her as an informant. There is no really mystery here, no puzzles to solve. The only mystery is how she is going to get out of her predicament of the moment.
Karma - Netflix Series
Karma | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix
This show is just nuts. We've got a whole bunch of very rotten characters who are willing to do all kinds of evil in order to get there grubby little paws on heaps of money.
The show starts off with a degenerate loser who is in debt to a loan shark. The loan shark is a serious dude, he has threatened to cut up the loser and sell his organs, so loser is highly motivated to pay back the loan. Meanwhile, his father gets knocked down by a car. Other than some scraps are bruises, he is uninjured, but he spends the night in the hospital. He sends his loser son to his house to pick some clothes and his son uses this opportunity to rifle through his dad's stuff and finds a 500 million yen accidental death life insurance policy (figure a thousand yen to the dollar and you won't be far off). All this gives dummkoff the idea to hire a hitman to knock off his father.
After this the show kind of explodes into multiple intersecting stories of murder, confidence games, extortion, blackmail and double dealing. It's pretty incredible. We've watched three of the six episodes and we've got like six story lines that, I expect, will collide in a spectacular finale.
Sunday, April 6, 2025
Heard Island and McDonald Islands
 |
| Heard Island and McDonald Islands |
I hear all the noise being made about Trump imposing tariffs on an uninhabited island. I didn't understand why people were making such a fuss. I suppose they were hoping to embarrass President Trump. No, that's not right, he's not going to be embarrassed by this nonsense. They (the ubiquitous 'they') are just throwing mud on his image, hoping to further inflame 'their' supporters', not that they really need any more flammable fluids. They seem to have plenty on hand.
Then I came across this meme on Midwest Chick's Place:
 |
| Heard Island |
There we go - Heard Island belongs to Australia. As the map at top shows, it is a long, long way from anywhere. Wikipedia tells us that:
They are:
- 2,500 miles southwest of Australia
- 2,600 miles southeast of South Africa
- 1,010 miles north of Antarctica
The islands, which are uninhabited, can be reached only by sea, and typically require a two-week voyage from Australia to visit.
Saturday, April 5, 2025
El Rey
 |
| 1963 Chevrlet Impala Low Rider El Rey |
Low riders are one more thing I don't understand. I can understand wanting to customize an older car, but the extremes that some of these guys go to is just mind boggling. Witness this video of the Las Vegas Lowrider Magazine Supershow 2024! Classic Cars and this one of the Las Vegas Lowrider Supershow 2021 Classic Car Show
The car is named for the builder's father-in-law's favorite song. I tried listening to it, but failed.
P. S. Spent some time looking for what I considered a good example of a lowrider and completely missed the fact this car is not lowered. I suspect it has hydraulic suspension and that allows it to be lowered. Also missed the conflict between the description of the Arco-Sport biplane and the image. I was feeling a little low yesterday.
Punctuate
Punctuation marks hanging out
Elle Cordova
Friday, April 4, 2025
EAA Super Acro-Sport (N4KH)
.jpg) |
| EAA Super Acro-Sport (N4KH) |
Cool pic.
The Acro Sport is a single-seat aerobatic sportsplane designed by US aviation enthusiast Paul Poberezny in the early 1970s for homebuilding. - Wikipedia
Thursday, April 3, 2025
Koh Rong
 |
| Koh Rong - Dara Keo |
Koh Rong is a resort island off the coast of Cambodia. Dara Keo has a website.
 |
| Koh Rong Cambodia |
Lesotho
 |
| Lesotho |
The move deals a harsh blow to the small, impoverished state, which Trump mocked as a place ‘nobody has heard of’.
 |
| Lesotho |
The Kingdom of Lesotho is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. As an enclave of South Africa. It is the largest sovereign enclave in the world, and the only one outside the Italian Peninsula. It is situated in the Maloti Mountains and contains the highest peak in Southern Africa. It has an area of roughly 12,000 square miles and a population of about two million.
It is the only independent state in the world that lies entirely above 4,600 feet in elevation. Its lowest point is the highest low point of any country in the world.
Okay, kind of an oddball little place, landlocked, high elevation, mountainous terrain. Why do we care about import duties for this tiny country? Because Levis are made there, that's why:
 |
| Workers pack completed jeans at Afri-Expo Textiles factory in Maseru, Lesotho [File: Roberta Ciuccio/AFP] |
How weird is that?
Mystery Rhebus
 |
| What's this? |
Took me a minute, but I fingered it out:
Doo Wah Diddy Manfred Mann REMASTERED VIDEO TRUE 1964 STEREO HiQ Hybrid JARichardsFilm
jarichards99utube
Wednesday, April 2, 2025
Ralph Adams Cram
 |
| Rice University Central Plant |
From New Notes from a Commonplace Book. Kind of a long story that talks about architecture, religion, civilization and books.
The Rightness of Ralph Adams Cram by Terry Cowan
An excerpt:
A bit closer to home is his design for the Rice University campus, including Lovett Hall, and the Central Plant, disguised behind an Italianate loggia and a campanile* which hides the smokestack. His small All Saints Church in Peterborough, NH is said by some to be the most beautiful church in America. Indeed, some architectural historians argue that he should be much better known today, suggesting that his eclipse by Frank Lloyd Wright was undeserved.
* Italian bell tower
Rice University is in Houston, Texas.
Note about the image. The image Google served up was a bit fuzzy compared to the original on Facebook. Don't think I've ever run into that before.
Grifterism: The Economic Engine of Democrats
Stolen entire from American Greatness. I was only going to copy the introduction, on account of the story being kind of long, but I clicked on something and some evil advertising campaign took over my browser, so to spare you the pain, I copied the whole thing here.
Grifterism: The Economic Engine of Democrats by Cynical Publius
Democrats run an economy of 'Grifterism,' where Billionaires, Productives, and Dependents fuel a system designed to keep the ruling class in power while stifling real economic freedom.
March 31, 2025
I am a political junkie and a political conservative. Like so many conservative political junkies, I spend a good portion of my waking hours trying to understand what the words and actions of Democrats actually mean. Like the Politburo of the former Soviet Union, the words of Democrats often bear little resemblance to the actions their words embody. “Equity” is an excellent example, as when Democrats say “equity,” they really mean highly inequitable policy solutions. Sometimes, however, Democrats deliberately fail to coherently describe the meaning of their actions, and then it becomes even harder to ascertain meaning. Such is the case with the basic economic policies of Democrats. Many on the right like to say that Democrats support socialism, but that’s not wholly true given how many capitalist components exist inside Democrat economic policies. Similarly, it is inaccurate to describe Democrat economics as being purely capitalistic because wealth redistribution is one of their core competencies. Some say that the Democrats enjoy government control of capitalist entities, rendering their economic persuasion fascist in nature. Yet, even that is inaccurate, given that fascist states view their economies as a source of nationalistic pride and strength, while Democrats tend to abhor nationalistic pride in the United States.
It’s not socialism. It’s not capitalism. It’s not fascism. What, then, is the overarching label that explains the economic policies and priorities of Democrats and their leadership?
It’s Grifterism. (I did not invent that word, or at least that’s what Google tells me. However, I believe I am the first author to ever use that term to describe a formal system of national economic governance, so I’m going to run with it.)
Grifterism is, as the name suggests, a system run by and for the benefit of grifters. Webster defines the verb “grift” as “to acquire money or property illicitly.” Grifters have always been a part of human society, but it took the 21st-century Democratic Party to turn the idea into a comprehensive economic system. The best way to understand this system is to analyze the four classes of citizens upon which Grifterism relies, and into which all American citizens are divided one way or another: Billionaires, Productives, Dependents and, of course, Grifters.
(Before I explain these classes, I realize that there are some readers who will jump all over these categories and tell me I am being too absolute in describing them. Yes, Elon Musk is a good Billionaire. Yes, there are bad Productives who exploit the powerless. Yes, there are many entirely productive people in government who are not Grifters. Yes, the nice old blind lady down the street deserves the support given to the Dependent class. Yet, as the saying goes, these are the exceptions that prove the rule.)
On to the four classes of Grifterism:
1. The Billionaires: The Billionaires are the capital creators upon which much of the system relies. While the top 1% of income earners pay 46% of all federal taxes, estimates suggest the Billionaire portion of that demographic alone pays for somewhere between 5% and 10% of all federal taxes. While this Billionaire class is defined by that 5% to 10%, realize, too, that the Billionaires create the businesses that pay the executive salaries of so much of the rest of the 46%, so in effect, Billionaire-related taxes fund nearly half of the federal government’s gross revenue and are the de facto economic sponsors of the Grifter class. (In addition to the punishing taxes they pay, Billionaires also enjoy the privileged punishment of being endlessly vilified by the “Tax the Rich” likes of Bernie Sanders, AOC, and their brainwashed acolytes.)
Ah, yes, those poor, poor Billionaires. They are taxed and vilified to an extraordinary degree, seemingly all as punishment for their riches. However, they are actually complicit with the Grifters by funding Grifterism in exchange for their existence being tolerated, and when it comes to economic policies, they are actually on the same side as the Bernies and the AOCs, it’s just not that obvious.
You see, the Grifters rely on a vast regulatory state that makes it very, very difficult to found new, Billionaire-creating businesses—unless you are already a Billionaire. Regulatory regimes like Dodd-Frank, the 1934 Act, the CFPB and a host of other business-harassing federal regulations and agencies mean that the greatest wealth-creating businesses can only exist when they hire legions of white-shoe law firms and high-priced accountants to ensure compliance with the regulatory burden. As such, only Billionaire-owned companies have the wherewithal to fund such compliance measures, effectively creating monopolies that shut out anyone else from ever joining their club.
As an example, Dodd-Frank has done little for America other than ensure that the big banks are bigger and the small banks are fewer, all by imposing massive regulatory burdens on an ever-dwindling population of small banks. A regulatory scheme that was purportedly designed to help “the little guy” only helped the Billionaires, purposely and deliberately suppressing the ability of the Productives (more on them later) from climbing higher and threatening to join the elite circle of the Billionaires.
The tryst between the Billionaires and the Grifters gets even worse when considering the concept of regulatory capture—i.e., the Billionaires are busy writing the Grifters’ regulations that will govern the Billionaires. Remember when the health insurance industry wrote the Obamacare legislation? THAT is “regulatory capture.”
Between Billionaire-friendly, compliance-driven monopolies and regulatory capture, the symbiotic relationship between the Billionaires and the Grifters becomes clear. Yes, the Billionaires pay far more than their fair share of taxes and face constant verbal abuse from the Grifter class, but they have a wink-wink acceptance of that because they sit secure on their wealth thanks to the Grifters’ penchant for regulatory entropy.
It’s pretty good to be a Billionaire—but not so much our next two classes.
2. The Productives: The Productives are the most important class of Grifterism, and its most abused class. The Productives are the people who do and make the services and things upon which we all depend. They are doctors; they are farmers; they are the guys running the oil rig; they are long-haul truck drivers; they are your green grocer; they are your lawn guy; they are your dry cleaners; they are your plumber; they are basically the people who serve as the engine of a productive society. They create, and they rarely take. They are small business owners, but they are also the W-2 employees who work for those small businesses. Not only do the Productives serve as the essential lubricant for a functioning society, they also mostly pay that 56% of federal taxes not paid by the top 1%. America cannot survive without the Productives.
Many Productives are wealthy small business owners, while other Productives are hourly wage earners. But everyone in the Productive class knows this—it could all crash down at any moment. Productives live a life of insecurity—their business could fail, a recession could rob them of everything they ever worked for, and “at will” employees know that every day on the job could be their last. Being a Productive is stressful.
But the most stressful thing about being a Productive is that you lead your economic life at the mercy of the Grifters. If you are a Productive farmer, a Grifter might shut you down by forbidding you to grow crops or by making sure you cannot irrigate your land. If you invest your company’s worth in oil exploration equipment, a Grifter might bankrupt you with new regulations. Even that Productive dry cleaner you go to weekly has to worry about a Grifter destroying their business because they accepted a shirt with a bloodstain.
Examples like what I cite above are seemingly infinite and often totally opaque to a Productive, until such time as a Grifter arbitrarily decides to enforce one of the millions of regulatory laws few even are aware of and shuts the Productive down.
Thus, while Productives are the class that society cannot live without, all Productives live an economic life of uncertainty, constantly teetering on the razor’s edge of failure, knowing that they exist only because of the largesse of Grifters, and those same Grifters can destroy them at any time with the click of a pen.
It ain’t easy being a Productive.
3. The Dependents: This is a tricky one. It’s kind of self-explanatory—Dependents are people that depend on government handouts to live. In many ways, this is just fine—an important function of any decent government is to ensure that people who are wholly incapable of taking care of themselves enjoy a social safety net. The nice widow lady up the block with crippling rheumatoid arthritis deserves our help. Alternatively, some Dependents are temporary—the Productive who lost his job deserves a safety net for several weeks until he finds a new place to be productive. These types of people are not what make Dependents worthy of shame.
It’s the able-bodied Dependent who would rather live on the dole than become a Productive that is shameful. It’s the young man on disability who really isn’t disabled. It’s the mother who has more children because her government pay-out goes up with each kid she births. These are the shameful Dependents. Dependents pay no taxes, live on the fruits of the Billionaires and the Productives, and give only one thing back—their loyal votes for the Grifters. Dependents are actually part of the Grifters’ big con, and the Grifter class has a symbiotic relationship with Dependents, just as it has with the Billionaires.
However, it is actually no fun being a Dependent. It’s too easy to become addicted to an idle life just above the poverty line, and in that regard, Dependents are not doing any exploiting; they are being exploited—by the Grifters.
4. The Grifters: Well, we’re finally here. By now, you probably have a pretty good idea of what the Grifters are up to, but let’s be clear that this class consists of more than just government workers. The Grifter class includes all of the intelligentsia: the university professors, the traditional journalists, the lobbyists, the Hollywood elite, the “BigLaw” attorneys, and, most of all, the NGO crowd. Further, not every government worker is a Grifter—the military, the police, the justice system, and many other government offices that provide what economists call “Public Goods” all house highly necessary government employees. (Those employees are not Grifters—they are Productives, but unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of government workers are in fact Grifters.)
But let’s get back to the NGOs (a term I use in this article interchangeably with non-profit entities), as they reveal the true level of perfidy perpetuated by the Grifters. If you have been paying attention for the last two months, you are probably aware that DOGE and brilliantly relentless and patriotic volunteer data analysts like Data Republican have uncovered the widespread prevalence of U.S. federal agencies taking your tax dollars and using them to fund dubious efforts by various NGOs. This wicked grift cycle goes like this: (1) Taxpayers pay taxes required because Grifters establish programs that require funding; (2) Congress approves such funding in the vaguest possible terms of intent and appropriates those funds to a federal agency run by Grifters; (3) the Grifters in that agency interpret Congress’ intent in the broadest manner possible and provide funds to NGOs that employ other Grifters with six-figure salaries; and (4) that NGO then engages in some sort of woke cause such as training transgender farmers—a cause very few taxpaying voters would vote for if they only knew about it.
The cycle of grifting prospers beyond just NGOs: the universities receive taxpayer funding to indoctrinate our youth; the lobbyists curry favor with the Grifters to improve their business opportunities; the journalists cycle in and out of government, spreading the Grifter ethos as truth; Hollywood pays homage to it all, infecting American brains with woke ideas that Grifterism is noble; the BigLaw attorneys become rich navigating the vast regulatory schemes that are the lifeblood of Grifterism, and the members of the Grifter class constantly cycle in and out of the various organizations that benefit most from their economic parasitism.
The Grifters are the only class of Grifterism that fully benefits from the corrupt system; in fact, the system exists by, for, and because of the Grifters—almost all of whom are voting for Democrat candidates who themselves wallow in the pig trough of Grifterism. “But wait!” you may say, “Government workers are not Billionaires, they are not wealthy. How is that a grift?” Grifters in government generally enjoy wages in excess of the national median income; they are entitled to retirement plans largely unheard of in the private sector; they have healthcare and other benefits that far exceed those of equivalent private workers; and, most of all, they enjoy job security that is unmatched by any other sector of American society. Most Grifters are unfirable—they have life tenure. Finally, they have the power to pull the strings of the entire Grifter class for their own benefit—back-scratching and beak-wetting are their secret ways of communication.
It’s good to be a Grifter.
Grifterism exists by, for, and because of the Grifters. The Grifter class allows the Billionaires, the Productives, and the Dependents to exist, but only so long as they provide the resources necessary for the Grifters to thrive. Understanding this system—and the fact that the system is almost exclusively the province of Democrats—perfectly explains why Elon Musk and DOGE are treated as existential threats by Democrats. That is because Elon Musk and DOGE are, in fact, existential threats to Democrats. If Grifterism unravels, so do the lifestyle, beliefs, and lifelong motivations of most Democrats. Democrats treat DOGE as a life-or-death matter. Patriotic Americans should do the same. Unraveling Grifterism is the essential act in making America great again, and vocal, robust support for DOGE is a task all patriotic Americans should embrace. Grifterism must end if we are ever to be truly free, and if we are ever to have small, non-intrusive government and genuine economic opportunity, Grifterism must be extinguished as the metastasizing cancer that it is.