April 4, 2016

Yesteryear
One year ago today: April 4, 2015, . . . except a straight answer.
Five years ago today: April 4, 2011, 1,000 scooter miles.
Nine years ago today: April 4, 2007, atop Chichen Itza.
Random years ago today: April 4, 2005, Rip-Off Alert: PC Professor.

MORNING
           Gadzooks! Did you see the silver pound-down this morning? See the blue line, from $15,40 down to $14,85. Do you have any idea how much money that represents? The big banks are getting desperate and when you get desperate, you get obvious. How about I explain it one more time? While banks don’t trade in precious metals, they are supposed to be in some form the repository of all the gold and silver upon which investment houses have been selling “certificates” for the past forty years. It is now estimated there is 300 times as much metal in certificates as there is real metal. In theory, the banks have this metal safely tucked away in a vault.

           That’s theory. In practice, the banks have long since “rented” the silver out. The formula is that if anybody asks to see the actual silver, the bank will have made so much money in loans from the rent money that they can buy enough of it back at the going rate to satisfy any curious inquiries. Ah, the flaw in this plan is that it only works when the going rate is predictable. And predictable means around $15 per ounce for several years now.
           And as far as the world knows, outside of a single New York class action involving a bank charging customers a storage fee for the non-existent silver, nobody with certificates has ever made “any curious inquiries”. Talk about wearing blinders and hoping nothing will go wrong. By now, the upward pressure is tremendous (if you ask me) and it will start to climb again immediately.

           Now reality. What happens during any economic crisis? People seek that which holds its value over that which does not. And can we think of anything that cannot hold value much longer? Any currency in the world, that’s what. Greece and Spain barely avoided collapse even with the bolstering effect of the German-backed Euro. Germany will not likely do this much longer.
           Enter silver. People with money suddenly want real silver and the price skyrockets. Those with certificates rush to the bank to get real silver, but there isn’t any. The banks must now buy or fail, either event pushes silver even higher. Those who say $6,000 per ounce may not be talking through their hats. Let me see what I would be worth if silver ever hits 6Gs. Jesus, not bad.
           And furthermore, I have a plan in place of exactly what to do with all that money long before the economy adjusts to the higher price levels. Silver can double overnight, but the price of real estate cannot. I have a convenient if awfully private database of what to buy, I serendipiticiously know the way from here to Colorado by back roads only, and have the infinite advantage of having learned from the times that money has acted funny before.

           Don’t expect any help from the Liberal media. They have consistently downplayed this aspect, preferring to focus on the value of the dollar. It’s fun reporting because the dollar changes every day. That daily fluctuation is merely a symptom of the underlying rot, but it is one that can be reported in many different ways, most of which blames foreign money. This is irresponsible but we are talking the press here.

Wiki picture of the day.
First production Corvette.
NOON
           Here’s why we need Trump. This article says the Everglades restoration project has doubled to $16 billion due to unforeseen blah-blah. Listen, I’ve been through the Everglades, you either dig a ditch or make an embankment or you don’t. Trump only has to go in there, take one look, and start firing these people. Or pressing corruption charges against them. Ain’t nothing in the Everglades costs twice what you thought except for unforeseen greed. The Army has 100 years of experience digging out there, so find out exactly what took them by surprise. I think we already know—that they could put in cost overruns and never be questioned.

           Then, using this as an example, start going after all government projects, one by one. He’d be remembered as the greatest anti-corruption president since ever. America knows why its bridges are falling and why the railways don’t run on time. They know why the freeways and airports are third world. But I’m not so sure about taxing American companies that relocate overseas. They may have had no choice due to labor costs, things were grossly out of hand when the exodus began.
           However, the lack of tariffs is an age-old empire-killer. Those products produced elsewhere could be taxed, but that does not instantly translate into high-paying US jobs. Ask the people who used to work for McDonalds once upon a time. America prices are going through the roof already without the increased labor costs of rehiring people who have gotten used to food stamps and free phones and cable TV as a necessity.

           Trump is assuming all of America wants back to work. I say they will be forced back only by threat of severe deprivation. I forget which Greek said that democracy only works until people figure out they can vote themselves a free ride. And the time just past taught 63,000,000 otherwise hard-working Americans how easy life is on government welfare. They’ve had their taste of handouts and that is now going to become treated much like another job benefit, just you watch.
           The logic is simple, it happened right after World War I. The returning soldiers could not understand how the government had enough money to train, feed, and arm every soldier on a lavish scale, then ship him overseas for two years. He was prepared to die for them, but when he came back, the government suddenly didn’t have one penny to get him a house, or car, or an acre of land.

           There is no way Trump or anyone else can flatly remove all those programs without raising the squeals of the entire welfare class and their Liberal allies. But he has sensed that there remains a slight majority who recognize as he does that if we don’t do something, there will be no next time. It is hard enough to get some people to work at all, much less after they have been sitting around for five generations crying the blues.
           He also has to confront the entire sub-industry that has arisen due to unfair taxes, healthy people who have conned disability to an almost Canadian extent, and foul practices that always accompany any society that glorifies money-lending. It will be hellacious giving some people a choice of work or starve, but handing them that situation is always a good start. We are dealing with a class of society whose entire life is basically leisure time.
           For Trump, the low-hanging fruit where he can instantly save billions is welfare, education, and government fat. No more burgeoning bureaucratic messes, at least for a while. He should freeze all government projects until a case by case independent review is conducted, immediately canceling anything that does not produce a clear social benefit. He would also be wise to curtail American interference in global politics immediately. All “consulate” and “diplomatic” missions permanently eliminated across the board and let private industry do their own proselytizing. No more spying and “diplomatic” pouches or immunity. They are an ancient European cancer on our way of life.

AFTERNOON
           JZ wants that Alva property I showed him on the way north last week, the one on the canal with the big oak tree. Since I called the seller twice with no reply, I have only the neighbor’s crazy notion that the place is listed for nearly $70,000, I’ve agreed to get through to the agent and find out the facts. But I’m not buying anything on a wing and a prayer. If I can’t afford it myself, I can’t afford it. It looks like the agent and the seller are the same person. Who knows, maybe he is short money or something?

           For the second time in history, both when I was house-hunting, I’ve run out of cell phone minutes. So I put some extra dollars on the account only to find out that the dreaded Virgin Mobile is charging me 15 cents for each minute. Scumbags. My plan restarts tomorrow, this puts me a day behind. What should I get up to?

           Slightly later, JZ is not going to be happy. The neighbor we chatted with across the fence was accurate. The agent himself bought the property in 2014 for $35,000 and is listing it for $65,000. Built in 1920, it has a “park-like” setting. It needs major work. Yes, I know that 2013-2014 was the time to buy, but back then I did not know I’d be here in 2016 so I diverted money to other causes. But I still could not have afforded any Alva real estate. The place has astronomical prices.
           We took a quick look around and backtracked a mile in the process, whereupon I noticed a sound barrier on the south of the highway. I wondered what was behind that, JZ said just another subdivision. He was right. Lehigh Acres. Prices in the high 300s. Maybe three hundred feet away from that “sleepy little town” I breezed through on my sidecar less than a week earlier. I was on the other side of the canal, you see, but it won’t be the other side for very long now.

NIGHT
           Okay, so I go up to the Dollar Paradise to get some plastic rulers. What? Well, I go through rulers here a lot, it’s called getting things done. Anyway, I go to thinking you know how some guys got real class and they buy the old lady a glass of wine now and then? Well, I don’t got no old lady, but I got to thinking of Jessie and Chrissy, the two barmaids at the old club. They were there last Friday and all.

           I get to figuring how dem nice broads like doze guyz who buyz ‘em presents an like, so I went all out. Here’s two glasses of wine for my favorite babes. Lookit right there, it says “San-gri-a”. The label says an Italian product and them wops know real good how the wine goes. It says this is aromatized wine-based drink, so I like that word aromatized. And best of all, it says by my thumb you get two whole glasses for a dollar.
           Ya don’t need one of then screwy things either. It says here you tear off the top, then you hold it upside down and squeeze. Out comes the wine-based drink, just like ketchup, or like when you have kids. See, this cowboy knows how to keep my women happy. I hope you was takin’ notes, Sparky. You gotta learn all this sometime.

           Um, I don’t drink wine. I don’t like the taste and a glass gives me a hangover. But I’m reminded of how often back at the phone company I got or won all kinds of wine in the weekly office shenanigans. Like the time I knew I was not going to have the best holiday costume, so I walked out of the washroom with a strip of toilet paper dragging on my shoe. Just a flash memory. Let me tell you something extra, however. There were 15,000 people on staff. And I was the best-known except for a tiny group of the company brass.
           I didn’t say popular, or admired, or accepted, or well-liked, or famous. I said best-known. What, with the way I drove a brand new Caddy, dated an actress, played in a band, and owned a taxi company in South America. You bet I was in the public eye.

           Oh, and when I gave the wine to one of the ladies, I think she took me seriously.

ADDENDUM
           Ah, what’s this. A typo on y’day’s post reveals a quirk that HTML does not seem to handle properly. I’ve tested it and it certainly works on this blog. Next step is to test it on Craigslist. Why? Because I have been their nemesis since the day they didn’t follow my advice about “one post one flag”. True, they don’t have to do what I say, but that means I must use other methods to point out the flaws in their system. Think of it as proactive user feedback. Millennials will easily follow this logic.
           Basically, Craigslist has disabled links. Or at least they think so. The problem is, they have written a series of rules that bypass the standard HTML tags. But what about typos? Nobody can account for every possible typo. We know that Google and Craigslist don’t hire real programmers. It takes them months to catch on to anything. Maybe there is fun left to be had with them people after all.

           In related news, I found by assigning my account a fixed IP address, I can knock down the Canucks who plug in their Skype phones against the rules. At 9:30AM and 7:30PM, more or less, my system slows down. So rather than grab an available channel, I program in 001, which clobbers the first guy and sets off a chain reaction. I get around twenty minutes of air time before they all redial and we do it all over again. What? You say that is inconsiderate? You are right, they should obey the rules.


Last Laugh
Stand by. Cracking Wordpress anti-copy code . . .


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