The United States will reach an end to a war within its own borders on October 19, 2031.
Depending on when, and where, and whom you ask, it will be referred to as the Second Revolution or Civil War II. Some will try to popularize "the Revolutionary Civil War." But that will not enter serious or popular usage.
There will be tens of thousands of fatalities, and a disproportionate number of non-fatal wounded. In fact, the hundreds of thousands wounded will be credited as compelling us to end the war and resolve the precipitating conflicts within the country that had been built up for decades.
A "winner" will not be declared. In fact, debate about it will be highly unpopular. Sentiments, even on the internet, will turn toward, "Be a part of the solution not a part of the problem." For a solid year, the main two factions will draft and ratify binding resolutions--with the purpose of reconciliation, rebuilding, and peace--with ongoing talks, resolutions, and rebuilding continuing more gradually for decades, becoming a permanent fixture in government, politics, and our very culture. Unhinged wrath, instead of rekindling old, destructive fires, serves as a reminder to de-escalate and inquire into our problems. Problems are (at least) two-sided, so solutions must be two-sided as well.
Conflict is not the solution. Yet conflict has indeed been humanity's only motivation to seek peace, resolution, the solving of our largest problems. The question is ultimately, "What led to those bombs being dropped on civilians??" Despite extensive experience in these pursuits, we are still more drawn to aggression, destruction, and violence. Honestly, we do not study peace. Perhaps we see it as essentially inert, instead of an active practice. And it takes a tremendous amount of study and practice. Conflict resolution takes training, dedication, and experience in order to consistently succeed at it over time. But we are clearly not even trying. The failure may have never been more evident as it has been in the 2020s.
CW: Bible verses. Progressive folks have interestingly taken up the Bible. Certain forces have not only abandoned the Bible in the last two decades or more, but turned directly against its teachings of kindness, tolerance, charity, and peace. (So I'm not talking about hippies, punks, metal-heads, or hip-hoppers.)
Proverbs 15
¹ A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.
² The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright: but the mouth of fools poureth out foolishness.
Proverbs 18
¹² Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, and before honour is humility.
¹³ He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.
Pride here relates to arrogance, hubris, unfounded confidence, delusion.
Little girl was part of a county fair agro-educational program where they raise an animal for a few months and at the end it’s slaughtered. Supposed to teach them about the economics of farming and stuff.
But the little girl loved her goat so much she was crying on the day her goat was supposed to be taken away, so her mom sent the county fair people an email saying “I’ll pay for the goat and any expenses. We’ve had several deaths in the family in the past year, I don’t wanna take away one more thing my little girl loves.” Technically the goat had already been sold at auction, so the mom was on the hook for about $1000, only about $70 of which would have been profit for the county fair.
The county fair people were irate and got law enforcement involved, over this “breach of contract”. They literally got a fucking judge to sign a search warrant, authorizing them to go to this little girl’s house and search every room and every cabinet or box “large enough to contain a small goat”. The sheriff’s deputies seized the goat, and whoever they gave it to immediately slaughtered it, though they were supposed to wait until some kind of agreement had been worked out.
In the county fair’s initial email correspondence with the girl’s mother, they made it clear that they were pissed off because the story of the little girl who loved her goat was circulating on social media making them look bad, and they felt the girl needed to be taught a lesson about keeping your promises or whatever. So they refused the mother’s offer to pay for it, and insisted they get the goat. Even if it meant sending the fucking cops into her house lmao.
the congressman who bought the goat didn’t have any objections to the family saving the goat from slaughter either! it’s fucking insane that the cops were so eager to play act their swat commando fantasies that they played stooge to the benefit of no one except some self important local organizers!
Alternate link, LAtimes locks their stuff behind paywalls sometimes
Don’t forget the part where the goat wasn’t where they had a warrant to search, so they drove 500 miles, leaving the area they have legal jurisdiction in, then searched a farm they didn’t have a warrant for ans seized the goat. The fair then had the goat slaughtered, even though a court had ordered them to keep it alive until ownership was resolved and despite the fact that both potential owners of the goat had decided to keep it alive.
They broke multiple laws in order to “teach” a little girl the “lesson” that “everybody has to follow the rules”.
I sure hope all of the complaints sent to Shasta District Fair CEO Melanie Silva, whose decisions these were and continues to defend her actions, are polite and don’t waste too much ink. I’m certain nobody would take advantage of the fact that the Sasha District Fair and Event Center’s contact page lists their phone and fax numbers, not to mention the email form below that.
I found the lawsuit filing. It is a work of art, brief and to the point. If you read nothing else, check out page 2, the section headed Nature of the Action. Magnificent.
One of the things that bugs me in the notes is a bunch of people being like 'it's a livestock animal, it's her fault for getting attached' and.
My dudes, I cannot emphasize enough that the little girl's emotional attachment to the goat is in fact the least of the issues with this story. The main issue in this story is the fact that a bunch of cops broke multiple laws, including the unlawful entry to the property the goat was being held, the unlawful seizure and destruction of said goat, and the unlawful use of a criminal search warrant in a civil dispute case, just to start with.
The little girl owned the goat. At no point in the proceedings - and indeed at no point in the proceedings in the course of the normal auction-purchase-slaughter of a livestock animal in this program - did the fair own the goat. At no point in the proceedings did the person who successfully bid on the goat actually own it - he had made the winning bid to purchase rights to the meat. He hadn't even done that yet! The goat legally and incontrovertibly belonged to the little girl. The very worst that should have happened in this story is a brief property ownership dispute in a civil court.
The fair CEO decided to unlawfully force the auction of the goat, and, when the girl's mother began to dispute her actions, to make a false claim of theft, with precisely ZERO legal basis, calling the cops on an already emotionally fragile child, and then had the temerity to be angry with the child's mother because the story was making them look bad on social media.
Regardless of your opinion on the meat industry, livestock slaughter, or 4H, 'cops drive 500 miles, perform an illegal search, seizure and destruction of an American citizen's property, on the word of a biased 3rd party with zero legal rights to the property in question' should make you angry. Because it is a violation of civil rights, and also had no motive besides needless cruelty to an already grieving child.
News to know: The next court update on this is sometime in October 2024. I'm watching this case because it covers a lot of different facets of how contracts work, minors rights, property rights in the face of law enforcement seizures and searches, and how does one county fair have so much brutality to wield against a then-nine-year-old.
I would not be surprised if this gets bogged down again with more counter-suits. It's absolutely ghoulish that they're doing all this over less than 1000$ of goat and one little girls grief. I hope that the judge who sees this case knows just how dangerous it is to dismiss, since this is a matter of third-party property rights infringement using law enforcement agents as bludgeons. The Sheriffs *cannot* be allowed to maintain extrajudicial authority.
For some reason, this makes me more pissed off than (possibly) anything else I've heard about this year. It's the first time in months I've wanted to write letters to shit-heads. Very angry letters, or possibly just very rational and stern.
I don't think any of these people should ever be off the hook for the rest of their lives. I want them to be hounded into hiding from the world, miserable hermits, or scared shitless, drifting from town to town, scorned by everyone who sees them, their posters everywhere.
It doesn't matter how many lawsuits any of them lose, it will never be enough. They had every opportunity to not only make better decisions for the sake of basic decency and humanity, but to follow the laws in place to make sure that people behave justly. Being in any position of power should never be an excuse to abuse that power. There are criminal charges on the books in some states involving actions of a "depraved heart." Looking this up, these refer to murder charges. I think the phrase ought to apply to other actions, constituting more severe charges. Any harm inflicted, involving excessive indifference, prejudice, malice. In other words, devoid of considerations of empathy, ethics, or compassion. To the point of cruelty, or the effects being cruel, even if the suspect may not have been deliberately cruel. These criteria would all vary between criminal and civil cases.
Boy, both positive and negative stories and ideas fill me with a lot of ideas and reactions...
Anyway, it makes me want to write letters, and also just write down my thoughts about justice, malice, human depravity, accountability, and consequences. This child was targeted. There is nothing accountable about the actions of the fair officials or the sheriff's office. No excuse should be accepted, ever. Okay, I'm too full of ideas about this. Injustice in the United States of America.
Look, I'm not a political guy. I just calls 'em like I sees 'em. And this very basic issue ain't political in the first place. Just like everything else in the stupid world, it's politicized. It's no more than basic economics and a little ethics.
So, really I'm being a little unfair to this schlub. He's not an economist. He's just posting a screenshot of- lemme see here- another CFP posting this drivel.
$150k isn't even an order of magnitude higher than $25k. I wouldn't call $150k quite rich. That amount of money could get you rich if your financial planner didn't get his training out of a Cracker-Jack box. $25k will get you homeless, so nobody should be taxed on that, or anything below about $40k.
Somewhere six figures to eight figures, not only does someone become wealthy, but their effective tax rate goes down. A bunch of tax laws and loopholes come into effect. AND guess what? There aren't nearly as many people pulling in millions per year as there are making five to six figures.
When it takes ten or a thousand of us to make what one of them makes, and they can hide more and more money from the IRS, the poors aren't the bad guy. The wealthy aren't necessarily the bad guy, either. (Yes, the government wastes a lot of money, and it still hasn't faced anything resembling a proper audit in 2026. Hell, yes we should tackle this problem from all sides.
Anyway, look. What would help people stuck at five figure jobs to contribute more taxes is higher wages without getting sunk with inflation. (I'm not going into the, "If you want a higher wage, then get some training." Yes, but thousands of jobs won't appear, just because thousands of people get better job-ready training. That's not even half a plan, so we gotta completely set that aside for today.) People who aren't getting taxed that much, because they're making under six figures, are making out people a little wealthier than them to be... victims 😅 and making out people making a little less money than them to be the thieving opportunists. "Their taxes are so low, but they complain about being poor." So you're complaining about your own taxes as of your poor. This is getting twisted. And you think the reason your taxes are so high is because poor people don't get taxed enough. But it couldn't be because people pulling in millions are under-taxed. Although, if millionaires and billionaires were taxed enough, then why do you still have to pay any taxes? 🤔 any respectable conservative administration would obliterate middle class taxes. But they can't afford to. Or they don't want to over totally ideological reasons. They want to keep you where you are. It would be so easy for any congress over the last fifty years to lower the tax rate on the middle class. IF they had the BALLS to tax the wealthy in a proportional manner. It would take such a tiny sliver of their taxes to off-set your taxes.
The fact that the middle class is over-taxed isn't partisan. It's a fact, which only very stupid politicians disagree with. Stupid people in general. But raising taxes on the poor to give the middle class a break is really stupid. Then, what are the poor left with? Kicked out on the street. And then the middle class AND the lower-middle class are pissed about all the tents they gotta walk around and the bodies they gotta walk over (step over? Whatever).
98% of us are voting for leaders who don't give a flying shit about us.
So ultimately, it doesn't matter how many great or terrible tax ideas any of us have. Unless we change government from the outside and the inside.
Let's do all of the above. Create better (higher paying) jobs. Grow small businesses; there is a lot of empty business space across a lot of cities. This is baaaad.
Audit governments effectively. This does not mean stumbling through essential departments and pushing computers off their desks and kicking people out.
There's something very wrong when lower unemployment lowers entry-level wages. We need tax incentives for increasing wages and for increasing jobs.
In my travels through weird corners of the internet, I've seen this... oddity before it's taken down again. It's usually cut up or redacted. I found an untouched copy. But this one suffices better, IMO. Unredacted, it's more unhinged. Just as oddly, it does make a good point about following the money, debt instead of assets.
Decades ago, trXmp sold an eight-figure Florida property to a Russian oligarch for eight figures, indeed over double it's purchase price four years prior. This was a suspicious but legal way to give Dmitri Rubolbiev over $50 million. It sure wouldn't have been an above board debt. Blackmail, possibly. Bribe. Or just a simple quid-pro for shady services. Some combination of them. Doesn't really matter. It's all a part of the same greater elitist underworld of Epṣtein, where favors and information are the best currency, more valuable than money, which is only used when they're desperate. The millions are more of an afterthought, a petty slap on somebody's wrist.
If they don't trade high enough for their compulsions, they're blackmailed for even more. Then they better trade their way back out of their hole with even more depraved favors. They're all tricks and marks. Leaders of the toilet cult.
Three inspectors deliver the lengthy 'Mafia State' inquiry report to the Independent Authority Against Corruption on Thursday, with announce
Returning to the topic of oligarchs and elites, one has to ask, what defines the super-wealthy who do not live among us little people? Are they all elites by virtue of having assets of nine, ten, eleven, or twelve digits? That's anywhere between hundreds of millions to hundreds of billions. Can we scarcely imagine the strata in those worlds of the elite? Look at $500,000,000,000 five hundred billion dollars, or half a trillion. Or consider nine digits: anywhere from one hundred million to 999 million. (Do any of those seem obtainable to you in your lifetime?) Now consider how much you might realistically earn in a lifetime. And how much might you keep? Whatever "keep" means, since you'll spend it during retirement, assuming you even get the chance.
It's pretty common for people to earn a million dollars over their lifetime, but inversely common to ever keep or amass a million in any shape or form. Average $50k per year for 40 years, and that's two million bucks. Most of that's spent every month. Savings won't ever touch six digits. If we don't count debt, sure $500k in assets is feasible by having a mortgage. And credit cards, medical debt, and all the rest.
And consider, the debt that eats away at us is one of countless means of funneling our money to the elites. Another is chronic under-compensation for our work. They don't just own the company, they own our work by virtue of owning the company. (Unless it's a co-op somehow.) It's not commerce, it's slavery. And everything we buy comes from the company store. We live in company housing. It's been like this our whole lives, so most of us will never see it for what it is. Though it is getting more obvious. So more of us may become aware during our lifetimes.
But that's not what I meant to discuss.
Looking back at the super-wealthy, how are they different from one another? Ideally, we ignore politics. Here's why. We can look at their behavior and try to avoid our judgments. How do they get their money AND what do they do with it?
I can't give you data about these factors, only questions and proposals.
What we do plainly know is that multi- millionaires and billionaires source their money in different ways. Earning wages is NOT one of them. Well, it's not critical in their overall income. Sure, when they have a $700 million corporation, they give themselves a salary. But beyond that, they have stock options, bonuses, and diversify their income and assets. They make money more by virtue of already owning than by labor. Sure, it takes work of a kind to buy and sell, and chose this or that. To manipulate, which is what most of it boils down to. Do they have good or bad intentions? Or are they amoral and removed from our world? They make money from our real labor. We pour our life's work into their pockets. Yes, we do get a fraction. But only a fraction, no matter how professional and valued our work is. Doctors are used by the system. Lawyer, less so, depending. Lawyers get to participate in the manipulation and the leeching.
So, are there ethical elites? We've heard of philanthropists. They are all criticized, no matter what their causes are. They are often seen as meddlers. And there are meddlers of all sizes, manipulating and causing trouble. I can see your gears turning. So many roads paved with good intentions. It seems like the more money people get their hands on, the more damage they do. Money IS power. Don't believe me? That's not a problem. Think about it later.
My $100 isn't very powerful. But to somebody who's been broke and close to starving for a year, $100 could change their lives. For better or worse. To somebody with $10 million in cash investments, my $100 is less than a penny on the ground is to me. But each of their $100 (all 100,000 of them) is leveraged against our power and success. We are under a hundred thousand of their thumbs.
But, y'know, a few of those $100 millionaires and billionaires probably are trying in completely good faith to be ethical in their dealings and to bring good to the world. They donate to housing initiatives, third world infrastructure, philanthropic medical projects, and all that.
The point I've done such a bad job at making is that there are different kinds of wealthy elites. Look at how they get their money, both in the past and in the present. Who did they step on? Are they mostly using their money now to: manipulate, meddle, and to increase the rate of their returns? Are they controlling the messages? That's propaganda, which in today's media is supercharged. And it doesn't matter what their values or intentions. It is about control and manipulation, no matter what the financial outcome is.
And even among the philanthropists, some of it's no more than PR to hide their abuses. Some of it, not all of it. Which ones are good and which ones are not? IDFK. I'm not about to make those judgments and ask anyone ever to agree with me. That's for everybody else to question. I just ask and hope that we do it thoroughly.
"you only deserve food and shelter if you contribute to society" says people living in countries where nobody's labor actually feeds or benefits their neighbors anymore but exclusively benefits the companies keeping the food and shelter behind the artificial paywalls
You're not nomads relying on each other to hunt and gather anymore, you're talking about stocking shelves for fucking wal marts
And even the oldest societies on earth all took care of the elderly or sick anyway
dudes will be like "if you don't Contribute To Society you don't get to live, that's the simple facts" meanwhile their job is like Marketing and Brand Development Specialist
Holy Moses, why did that not occur to me? It's more like,
"You don't get bread, water, a roof, and a way to wash yourself unless you produce revenue, 60 to 90% of which goes to the overlords!"
So any of us having to accept or reject that is massively sad. This is pathetic. This is a crime against humanity. But it's more likely that we'll get locked up for saying so.
"You better accept this shitty job, or we'll take away everything you own!"
Then they take away the shitty job and everything you own... Or they shoot you, or lock you up if you're "lucky."
1.5% was never a mandate, much less a "landslide."
What's more is that any shift of more than 0.75% would have tipped the popular vote.
The electoral votes were suspect at best.
"Kamala was crowned by the DNC without a single vote cast."
That's maga propaganda. It's often coupled with, "They tried to erase trXmp from the ballot."
What would you rather? That Biden stayed on the ticket? Again, maga bullshit.
Like it or not, no political party is itself a democratic organization. Abiding by the votes of the pseudo-constituency is no more than a courtesy which can be omitted without so much as a cursory show of hands. It's utter nonsense to think that people who want nothing to do with the democratic party would also complain how it operates, much less opine about being ignored by it. If these people exist in any quantity, they are all complete idiots. Honestly, has nobody pointed this out before?
Roughly a third (or more, depending on whose numbers you trust more. But notice these numbers don't stray, no matter how many sources you look for) of eligible voters did not vote. There has been no "spoiling" since Ralph Nader. The biggest decider in two decades of elections is no more than apathy itself. You can bet that at least half of that third still did have an opinion. That's easily a potential swing of 16%. And furthermore, voters have every right to vote against whichever candidate they dislike the most. Though, on some level, a large number don't believe that they do, so they stray home. Therefore, when thoroughly considering voter intent, in many cases, it is at least as important to consider which candidate is unwanted the most, if not more so.
Only 62% of voters bother to show up. One wins by a popular margin of 0.75% (that's ¾ of one percent for all you math nerds). Meanwhile, the percentage of the electorate who would have shown up--if they felt their "anti-votes" mattered--is in the double digits. That's two orders of magnitude, going from a fraction to anything over ten.
There are clearly numerous unaddresed, serious problems with our democratic system(s):
Simply the political parties themselves. Especially that there are only two major ones. They need to be kept out of how congress functions, too.
The electoral college and gerrymandering, which are intertwined.
Having a long AF voting season. A whole year? No. More like half. Jesus.
They don't just have a big money problem, it's a huge money problem. It's like the cola war, fucking stupid.
Our bad education feeds our ignorance, and now we're in a downward vicious tail-spin. Repairing this will take a long time and continual hard work on the part of the public. The government will NEVER fix this, much less either political party. In fact, it's because of the political parties themselves.
Take political parties out of government, get rid of all the partisan bullshit. Congress must directly obey the public's will without question. Political parties are utterly antithetical to any hope of effective representation.
Regardless of the quality of a high school diploma or GED in the future, we can't dig our way out of this hole without a public education campaign directed at adults. We can't get 100%, but far more of the public must understand how our government works, or is supposed to, so that we can at least call out the bullshit that gets in the way.
Then civic engagement can increase, which improves representation and the functioning of government.
A campaign to help citizens understand propaganda, deconstruct it, and dismantle it. This will serve to weaken political parties. In time, we may be able to redefine and reconstruct political parties as functional parts of a representative process that helps the public will to direct the government without the interference of interests that oppose the public will. It's so simple, saying it out loud becomes... redundant.
I've got a great idea. How about no Democrat nor Republican gets elected in 2028 to any office. We can safely assume every single one of them is guilty of corruption. Why would anyone a member of either one of these parties after 2016??
We're your underlings, but we have to give you explanations constantly? And then you don't believe us. And then you make stupid decisions, regardless. And we suffer the consequences. And then you punish us for calling any attention to it. Quality and quantity drop. And then you still blame us, put us on notice, probation, and then fire us. And then you complain about high turnover and the poor quality of the workforce.
This is a prison, the entire planet. And you're all screws, just as trapped as we are. Just too stupid to see it, too cowardly to do anything about it.
I've said numerous times that we need to get rid of all the weak language. This blurb is almost halfway there.
Here's what I expect from any politician trying to be worth a shit:
We cannot tolerate this blatant destruction of our beloved country for one more day, one more second! We must bring this reign of terror to an end!
We must start making arrests immediately, with all available resources. Governors, state police, state DOJs, mayors, local PD, national guard! This is precisely when states' rights must kick into high gear!
This "Federal Monarchy" is the worst thing to happen to us since the British, worse even. This destruction WILL NOT END until enough of us take bold action, even unconventional action. No fascist regime has ever been defeated through legislation, elections, demonstrations, or mere riots.
This requires organized and aggressive action. Not violence, but decisive and unwavering self-protection. Everyone working on behalf of the regime are no more than willing human shields. They may deserve our pity, but not our mercy.
We've been too forgiving and too yielding for far, far too long.
If I disappear unexpectedly, or somebody makes it look like an accident or suicide, you will know who did it.
I keep my eye on economic and financial indicators. The best way I can describe the norm is that it's always a mixed bag, and it favors the wealthy, and more so the super wealthy. Each lower rung is taking scraps from the one above, yet also feeding all those above.
Here's what's going on currently. The stock market has been doing well, even though a lot of shit's real fucked up for regular folks. Even the middle and upper middle class are feeling it, but still comfortable enough to keep their mouths shut for now. The top few rungs are doing better than ever. This throws off the average, making a shitty situation look good on graphs and shit.
On one hand, the upper levels of finance are mostly out of the wheelhouse of average folks. Though many regular folks do have a retirement account or other investments, what's going on with the elites is beyond us. We can get clues here and there if we make a job of hunting for them.
Here's what I hunted down for January 2026. 2025 was great for the top elites, and plenty great for those a few tiers down. But the gap below that is becoming more of a gulf than before. I mean the gulf is growing upwards. Let's say the fifth through tenth tiers used to be relatively well cared for, for decades. But in the 4th quarter of 2025, there was a major shift that is off the radar of nearly everyone (like 96%+ of the population). And many of those who have snuck a peek ain't sayin shit.
Here's that shift: that gulf that used to be felt by us peons is now hitting those 5th-10th tier sub-elites. People with a few million in specialized investments got shafted from October all the way through December.
So the little people and even most people with less than, say, $80 million are sucking it. The kind of person with a multi-million dollar company doesn't give a shit about health insurance tax credits, but their fancier investments are flailing. They just don't want to admit it, even to their families or even themselves.
