One year ago today: June 15, 2015, the Darlington explained.
Five years ago today: June 15, 2011, our favorite fugitive.
Nine years ago today: June 15, 2007, 176,000 repossessions.
Random years ago today: June 15, 2010, a non-politican before Trump . . .
MORNING
This is the new truck in the shade of the front yard. Once more you can see the searing, blistering heat in the background. JZ says that he knows of a lawn that will flourish in this shade, which is pretty complete as far as shade goes, you don't see even a speckle of sunlight under the canopy. Today you get editorial, since I’m just packing up and staying indoors.
Worse, if I did get a thousand together in those days, I’d invest in some wild scheme. Anything was better than doing nothing. But I slowly learned that the trick was not to think you’d get rich, but to stop the bleeding by the system. When things went wrong, they gouged the snot out of you. I was well into my 30s before I realized the trick was to prevent that—but how to do so is complicated and individualistic. The savings did not have to be all that great if one learned how to use a nest-egg to combat the system.
The hardest lesson was buying and paying cash. Not only do people who buy on credit lose the ability to bargain for lower prices, so do the sellers. Many sellers don’t grasp the reality that a lower price right now is better than on the later credit card statement, where it carries that sour aftertaste of government intervention. I finally learned to isolate a core amount of working capital from the vagaries of the system. I don’t always get it right, for example, my $800 flat tire from Father’s Day last year. But I carried that off without using a credit card or cashing in favors.
It is hard to illustrate why that tiny $30 per month eventually became twenty times that amount, because that still is not a lot of cash even today. Yet it isolates me from the countless situations that used to eat up every penny I had when anything went wrong. It took years for me to catch on how many bad mistakes one makes when the other person has you in a corner. Now, I replace savings rather than get pressured into paying all kinds of nuisance charges built into a system that is customized to gouge those with no other choice. It is really lack of choice that makes the poor stay poor.
A prime example of that gouging is the $29.50 “overdraft fee” on a bank account. I have never paid a fee like that in living memory even in the direst emergencies. Because that fee is designed to snag you when you are just a few bucks short. Note that I’m referring to money you earn, not money gotten for free. There is danger in this concept that isn’t obvious. If you give people that $600 per month for free, it creates a permanent welfare class. Not to mention the incredible beyond-irresistible draw it has on border-jumpers.
When I think back on it, I’ll tell you the hardest part to get over. When you begin, it is impossible not to compare yourself to the already-rich. In fact, your foe is not the rich, but the zillions of losers at the bottom who are NOT saving that $30 per month. That’s who will really shaft you. That’s who really steals that $5 bill you left on your dresser. That’s the prick that tacks the $5 “late fee” on your vehicle registration.
It’s a 57-pound wombat.
NOON
Ah, what’s this? What did I tell you? Trump would eventually block rotten leftist news media out of his rallies. I’ve been out of the loop but I see the Washington Post joins BuzzFeed, Politico, The Daily Beast, Univision, and The Huffington Post as the select group Trump says are scum. Oddly, I note these media do not deny they are publishing Trump-hate and hit pieces, but prefer to attack Trump from the angle of “free speech” and such. That pretty much tells us who is guilty. Who can blame Trump? He knows dastardly reporting when he sees it. These rallies are private events, you Libtards. Claiming to be the media doesn’t grant you an automatic pass card.
[Author's note: personally, I had no idea who or what the Washington Post was before Trump began to point out the dishonesty of the media and the scumbag tricks they use to claim they are only being fair. On that note, I would like to see Trump squash these self-righteous "editors" like the Liberal parasites they are. I said, personally. Otherwise, I don't care.]
It is not Trump who ran this country into the ground over the last 30 years. And they should not criticize Trump for exposing who did. The one improvement I would make on Trump’s assault on the establishment is he should start naming names. What is the name of the individuals who let the terrorists into the country? Whose signatures are on the immigration documents? America has had enough of civil servants who are just doing their jobs. It is not only the Muslims who have to start turning in their own.
As for Marty’s side of the story, well, I’d like to hear it as soon as he can quit blabbing freedom of this and that nonsense. But I dunno Marty, how can people listen when you are lacking the proper press credentials . . . and without those, like, who are you?
These newspeople seem mentally incapable of grasping one point. No matter how many evil things they can invent about Trump, they can’t understand that millions support Trump because the establishment candidates are even worse. If they only see the anti-Trump side of things, they are driving people fed up with DC into his camp.
AFTERNOON
I have a hard time viewing copper as a precious metal. It keeps showing up on my search algorithms as a good performer. But at 22 cents an ounce I am unsure of how to invest in this. Where would one keep a ton of copper (except in one’s brand new back shed)? Here is a ten-pound ingot, which if bought at a discount, is about $35. My speculation is that the metals would move the same direction, but not in unison.
Using my policy of never investing in anything you don’t understand, I watched this copper video. Once you get past the military goofs, like the guy who thinks you are impressed that some ship is 600 feet long, it is actually quite informative about the smelting and recycling process. Beware, this video is docutainment, that is, ten minutes of material stretched into forty minutes by useless talk-overs. Like we need to be told that blowing up dynamite is a dangerous job. I did not know that recycled copper is not used for electrical wire, but most plumbing pipe is recycled.
Food. Time to mention food.
If you have not tried Russian mayonnaise, buy a small sample first round. It is tasteless, not like real mayo at all. It’s so mild you can use it to cut raw horseradish. And the decoration on the package doesn’t seem to make any difference. All of it is bland, with about as much taste as the Washington Post. There, that’s your food mention for the day. Russian cookies, on the other hand, are still totally non-GMO and you gotta love that.
Air conditioning. During a recent month of cool weather, I barely used by air conditioning at all. My bill was $36. Last month, I was gone and both times accidentally left both my air conditioners on full blast for two solid weeks during the heat spell. My bill came to $65. So there you have it, any cheapskates who suffer in the heat to save money on electric. The difference between practically none and luxury comfort is only $29 per month. The same goes for ass-hats to don’t know why auto air has a maximum setting. Don’t turn it up if it’s too warm, turn it down if it’s too cold. Anything else is just being a dink.
Eye-opener for people who are not happy during their retirement. In my packing so far, books, hobby, and small tools account for a full third of my boxes. When I include my musical equipment, it is roughly half. This, folks, probably has a lot to do with my intolerance of people who complain of being bored.
If nobody noticed, silver hit a recent high today, something like $17.63, it can be quite tricky to get the highest daily price on-line. The telling factor may not be the steady reaching of a higher price, but the amount of time that the price stays over $17. If it stays long there enough, something has to give.
James Watson: for his work on exploding trousers. Actually, it may be the Ig Nobel award committee who should receive the honors. You see, the trousers really did catch fire, it was discovered, on farmers who had earlier been mixing certain types of fertilizer or pesticide chemicals. The book is not about the trousers, but the social effects of labor shortages in 1930 New Zealand, a valid concern that exists to this day.
NIGHT
If you liked my history lesson on savings, how about my misconception of business investment when I was a kid? I thought if two guys formed a company that if they did half the work each, they should get half the money each. Wrong, the law says the one who put up the most money gets more, forever, no matter how many times over he makes his investment back. Don’t say it is obvious. I didn’t know that and I was a pretty sharp kid. I was all for repaying the other guy and recompensing him for his initial layout, but only insofar as the profits were split according to the work done.
You see, if it wasn’t split like that, it would give a permanent advantage to the people who had money. And I didn’t believe such a thing would be allowed. As you can imagine, I was pretty disappointed with the ways of the world once I found out. And don’t go thinking I’m the only one, no sir. Because now that I’m the one with the money, I keep running into other people who think their work is worth half. The difference here is, they aren’t kids any more.
Then I had to decide if it was movietime. Let’s see what America has to offer for the dollars in my pocket. The X-men. Alice Through The Looking Glass. Captain America. The Jungle Book. Popstar. Angry Birds. Ninja Mutant Turtles. Say, would anyone mind if I just stayed home and packed a few things? How do you like that new feature where you can “track” your movie to see how it is doing. That’s right up there with those clips on how the movie was made and interviews with the supporting actors.
Forget the movies, I packed even more books and went to the local dive to play country on the juke box. Get your tush back here manana for some potentially good news. There were five available women, over-dressed for the role, but none my type. That means not one of them came over and introduced herself, which is kind of the only tactic that would have worked on me in that joint. Remember Kat from the old Buddy’s Place? She was there, so if any of those women want another kick at the can, they can get the how-to data from Kat.
I had my nose in the book and mapped out the budget between how and August 6. If nothing goes bad, we could be completely back in the saddle by then. I don’t mean just the new place, but ready for further aggressive investment. That’s in addition to what is already slated. This information is a bit of a secret, so don’t go spreading it around.
ADDENDUM
You may have picked up on the link to Jason Derek Brown in the Yesteryear section this morning. The guy is still on the run, or put another way, he continues to outsmart the system year after year. This shows you the American “legal” system is no longer based on catching criminals, but on using that as a premise to keep tabs on everybody. Folks, whether or not you have a criminal record, you have a police record. Same as Canada now.
It has become clear that it is really the entire Mormon community that needs to be taught a lesson. If you think the eunuchs at Quantico are going to tolerate a private organization of rich men with multiple wives living in a guarded compound go unattacked, you’ve never heard of Waco.
So, let’s get an update on what they’ve been saying about JD. Remember, they have to progressively vilify the guy to keep him in what they perceive as the public eye. Ah, here we go, I picked Bill Warner Investigations, of Florida. Here’s the latest, according to Bill.
Jason is making $30,000 per week as head of a gang of sex slavers in up in Georgia. He was a Mormon elder before being converted to a offender by his father, who was a gambler and con man “rumored to have criminal links” when he disappeared in 1994. We are warned that Jason has a cocky attitude and an interest in strippers, booze, and hip-hop nightclubs. My God, the next think you know, he’ll be a Trump-supporter. How shocking, but that is the very idea.
The more this thing drags on, the more it is beginning to smell like a setup. His lifestyle, says the cops, requires “lots of cash”. But you have to like that angle that he was an Eagle Scout before his father corrupted him, you know, that maybe he’ll turn himself in for his own good. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Say, whatever happened to Shkreli? Was he also too smart for the senate sub-committees? Mark my words, when they can’t screw him any other way, they’ll slap a tax audit on the guy. The IRS is the enforcement agency of the big medical insurance companies. That, folks, is how the system works. They’ll keep going until they pin something on him, for he is an outsider. Mind you, they are going to have to get something on that super-sharp lawyer he’s got.
Other non-correct-religion entities being attacked by the Feds? Keep an eye on Whole Foods. The establishment hates Whole Foods and want to replace the chain with something equally over-priced, but more, shall we say, kosher.
Last Laugh
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
