Great Story for People Who Don't Like Governments

 I never heard of this guy until I watched the movie on Netflix. He formed an independent state inside the confederacy during the Civil War.

The "20 Negro Law"

It's amazing to me that soliders just don't take up arms against the politicians that send them to die, especially when things like the "20 Negro Law" exempt rich assholes from "service". I never heard of this. It's amazing.

20 Negro Law

The Insanity of Political Partisanship

When I was growing up, there were a sequence of political scandals and financial scandals that demonstrated politicians are scumbags. For example, a bunch of politicians were involved in the Savings and Loan Crime wave of the early 1980's... There was the house post office scandal. There was some sort of gay sex scandal with the congress involving college aged assistants. Then, roughly at the same time in corporate America, things like the Love Canal pollution crimes were happening. Anyway, it was pretty easy to conclude that lots of the institutions in the US were utter frauds.

I don't think I consciously embraced the philosophical Cynic perspective until roughly 2008, though. I fell for the Red/Blue party scam briefly as a first time voter, but realized when Obama was elected that the system itself is broken and corrupt. Obama gave billion dollar contracts to inept cronies, and sold the American people on Obamacare, which was just another corporate scam, plus continued the Wall Street bailouts and crime wave.

In general the corruption and incompetence have gotten considerably worse since then. It's bizarre to me that there are any political partisans. It's dopey and infantile, but I have many friends and family members who are full on partisans for either the red or blue squad.

What will make people seek wisdom? I wonder about that on a daily basis. A bunch of words won't. Maybe harsh life experience will?

Governments: Always the Worst People

It seems like people in Geauga County do a good job, on average, taking care of their dogs, but when they can't and the dog ends up in the shelter, it's usually a happy ending. The dogs are well cared for by the staff and volunteers, and typically end up adopted in a week or two. The dog shelter even imports dogs from other places from time to time.

Weirdly though, in recent weeks the Trustees and Sheriff decided the Sheriff needs to take over the dog shelter. One of the possible motives for a bizarre power trip by douchebag local politcal cretins is the wife of the auditor is on the board of the "Rescue Village" and maybe the lady doesn't want "competition" from the Warden for her pet organization? Who fucking knows?

Anyway, it's just more evidence that politicians are the worst human garbage. They are defective weirdos who should be shunned and ridiculed. Imagine wanting to sit in regular meetings about roads and septic systems for years on end so your name might end up on a plaque hanging on a building that wasted millions of dollars of tax money. Ambition is absurd.

Governments are only capable of proscriptive negative action on behalf of cronies and self-interested weirdos, but many people look to the government to solve all their problems as if it were magical.

It will be interesting to see how all this plays out. The dog shelter is quite popular and many people have first hand positive experience with the facility and staff. Hopefully the cretin politicians involved get their careers vaporized.

Wisdom versus Vigilantism

The assassin character was ultimately revealed in the CEO assassin story. The guy's name was Luigi Mangione or something like that--it doesn't really matter. The story could be real, or fake and staged. It's impossible to know.

Is the predatory, parasitic system going to change because a single CEO was murdered? Probably not. If a bunch of similar incidents happened, let's say 20, maybe there would be a change for a while, but eventually it would revert back to its current predatory, parasitic path.

The only thing that would really change the whole system would be a change in the people. People are so stupid and foolish now that I'm not sure "the system" can even continue to function. Routine maintenance on basic infrastructure will soon become impossible because of a lack of competent people to do basic things like fix water and sewer lines.

"AI" and "robots" are a MacGuffin that will never really come to fruition.

Unfortunately, I think only hardship will make people wise up.

Nobody Gives a Shit about UHC CEO

It's interesting to read YouTube comments sections on a "hot topic" where people haven't been groomed to believe bullshit about a given subject.

The CEO that was murdered is not receiving an iota of sympathy in comment sections on even mainstream videos about his assassination. That's really pretty rare--usually at least some fraction of the comments will provide a poseur, scripted response on any given topic, but not this time. The people who want to post a comment on the subject are unanimously condemning the greed of health insurance corporations and aren't feeling a shred of empathy for a guy they consider a crook.

Syria/Russia Lose War

The neocons, aka jews, destroyed Syria, like they destroyed Iraq. I think their theory is Israel's jews will use US resources and manpower to dominate the chaotic, wrecked country and will eject Russia's naval base to score a "victory". It's pretty mysterious what the US gets out of any of his activity--more debt mainly.

I think the scenario really isn't much different than Iraq--one government gets replaced by another one but the population and culture remain largely the same and the lopsided demographics of the area don't change to favor the tiny jewish enclave in Israel.

Paying People Like It's 1970

US wages and productivity grew at the same rate in the post WW2 economy era, then diverged in the "neoliberal" era, aka the era of financial theft. It's not some huge mystery why it happened. The system is setup to do exactly that. The guy who just assassinated the United HealthCare CEO maybe will end up being the shot heard 'round the western world.

In the era of at least a nominal gold standard, money was essentially a token of productivity, or represented a share of the whole economy. In the funny money neoliberal era, the people who get money first benefit most from it, then its value declines every time it changes hands basically because there's always brand new monopoly money spewing into the system and acquiring ownership of corporations or property, or whatever.

The people who run this system want to transform what's nominally a "free market" (it's really not because of the monopoly money) into a command and control, two tier dictatorship, which is basically already is.

In the US, it's pretty obvious the system is breaking down. I see it in my day to day life. The local parks district now does a bad job grooming the ski trails--they used to do a good job just five or ten years ago. Why is that? The parks can't afford to pay people, I guess, so they get inexperienced crew members and can't keep them, and maybe can't find help in the first place.

To get competent people to do some job like putting shingles on a roof costs a lot today. Not all that long ago it was maybe $5000 to redo a house like mine, now it's more like $15-20,000. 

Unfortunately, there's no way to fix this system. Who's going to wait 50 years for the neoliberal system to be "reformed" gradually? Why would someone in his 20s sign up for a series of shit jobs to make slave wages, not afford a home, etc...? To that person the USD is already valueless. When a new car costs $40,000--plus the car sucks because the car makers can't afford to hire any good people to build them and dealers won't pay anyone to maintain them, the $40,000 is already trash.

The idea that robots and AI are going to magically fix the economy is sci fi retardation. I think the pie in the sky automation concepts will actually turbocharge the clusterfuck scenario.

Health Insurance CEO Whacked!

A few days ago the CEO of "United Healthcare" an insurance company was gunned down in the street by an assassin. The motives are unknown at this time. It could be a personal thing, like conflict with a spouse or friend or whatever, or some dirty corporate dealings, or a political thing--the assassin decided to take out the trash, basically.

I'm surprised this kind of thing doesn't happen more often, really. Insurance in general is a scam, but the health insurance industry in particular is gross.

I think it's appropriate that it happened as the neoliberal system is falling apart.

Snow Belt People

The first heavy snow of the year left about 8" of snow on the ground in my neighborhood, but it's compacted down a lot in subsequent days since the ground is still so warm so it's only about ankle deep in lots of places. We're south east of Lake Erie, and the wind that dumped the lake effect snow in northeast Ohio was out of the west south west, so areas like Madison and Ashtabula got hammered with multiple feet of snow and accumulation.

My wife and I walk the dogs at the park every single afternoon. I don't think we've missed a day this year. We go in the rain or snow, but we wouldn't go in severe weather like a thunderstorm or extreme wind. Anyway, we're not alone there even on the bad weather days. There's a younger guy probably in his 20s who runs the trails even with snow on the trail and there's a woman who walks every day no matter the weather. She probably puts in 5-10 miles of walking per day even on the snowy trails.

It's good to have a certain dose of adversity in life and to face some natural difficulty. Without that, functional strength, mobility, fitness and bone density vanish especially when 40+ years old, then a single random event can be devastating. I wiped out yesterday when cross country skiing, the left ski hit an ice patch and I flopped onto the snow, which is a really forgiving surface obviously, but even so there's a pretty significant jolt to the body from it which is beneficial.

Walking a couple of miles in deep snow or on trails with irregular compacted snow is great for balance and strength and mobility, plus it's extreme cardiovascular exercise. It's difficult to replicate those real world scenarios in a gym, or by doing a narrow range of motion exercise like riding a bike or running, which is probably even more limited.

Anyway, lots and lots of people feel "lucky" to avoid manual labor or severe exertion, but end up like a brittle sack of bones even at a young age. It's a lot easier to recover from a significant injury when all the surrounding muscle and bone is in good shape, and that also allows one to be adaptable.

Woke "Engineers"

The feds are trying to push the "Rust" language for systems programming. The "Rust" language is infested with woke lefty retards. It's not such a surprise that tech has gotten completely infested with fags and women in its "power structure" because the typical engineer goes along to get along, and will just walk away rather than get involved in some mud wrestling match with dopes. The institutions, like corporations and standards bodies, etc... don't really matter much. It would be nice if they "functioned", but when they become dysfunctional the actual productive people will just move on and do something else.

Trump Tariffs and Ozempic

I saw a few different headlines about Trump's tariff plans. It sounds stupid and lazy and will backfire. The idea is that the US can bring manufacturing back onshore via a couple simple policies, like high tariffs, even though the present US position is the result of decades of laws, corporate action, educational choices of millions of people, etc...

Can the US outcompete China? Probably, but it would be a huge effort, and nobody wants to make that effort because people are dumb and lazy and corporations are greedy and lazy. It reminds me of "ozempic", which is a diabetes drug, but can also be used as a weight loss drug--but it has horrible side effects and doesn't actually make a person healthy. It's not going to increase VO2 max, or muscle mass or anything salutary, plus it has potentially horrible and deadly side effects.

Gen Z -- Why Get a Job?

 

The average starting salary for Gen Z is only $42,000! What the fuck?! That's around what I made at my first job out of college when the first season of Walker, Texas Ranger was on the air. $42,000 today was the equivalent of $21,000 back then. I had college temp jobs where I made the equivalent of $21,000 doing trivial, easy tasks. A salary of $42,000 now in many areas of the US is poverty wages. It'd be impossible to even rent an apartment in major metro areas with that kind of income. You'd have to be insane to throw away 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year for that kind of money.