Pattern Recognition comes full circle.

So, a funny thing happened in the early 80s; America elected a former actor, and former California governor, Ronald Reagan. I was too young to vote in the 1980 election, but I remember it well. Many of my friends were Reagan supporters, and I was not. I was a democrat, or at least I thought I was. My parents were democrats, although they were not political people. My father was a FDR democrat, and my mom was a JFK democrat, which is understandable given their age difference. 

I was always interested in politics, but to understand the 1980s, and basically every period before the turn of the millennium, you have to understand how people got their news back then. You had three TV networks, a handful of big newspapers, two large news services, and news radio. Long before social media, before blogging, before Reddit, the news came from these same sources. Everyone listened, watched, and read the same news. We had no choice.  

Here's a fun fact, all of those entities listed above, hated Ronald Reagan. I mean they hated him. He was a stupid Hollywood 'B-actor' who was just a sock-puppet for the republican machine. That's kind of what I thought of him in his first term too. 

He was a bumbling buffoon, according to every news anchor reading words off a teleprompter each evening. He was destroying the economy, the country, and was going to blow up the world. That is what every media outlet told America, day after day. The thing is, in his first two years, it looked like they may have had a point. 

Ronald Reagan inherited a tremendous train wreck of an economy. If you think the 9% Biden inflation was painful back in the summer of 2022, early into the Reagan presidency, inflation was around 12% and even worse, interest rates were close to 18%. Think about that for a second, an 18% interest rate on a new home mortgage. All that, and unemployment was high, right around 9%. That is a catastrophic economic situation. What did Reagan do? He cut taxes. I mean he really cut them. The top income tax bracket fell from 73% to 28%. He eliminated taxes on low income earners too. 

The news media went crazy. This was just a big tax-money giveaway to Reagan's rich republican friends. If you watched the evening news, this was going to cut all the money for Social Security, Welfare, and Food Stamps, etc. Stop me if this sounds familiar. 

What happened in that first two years? Well, there was some real pain. As interest rates finally started to come down, and inflation started to drop, unemployment went higher. From around 9% to around 11%. That meant a lot people lost their jobs as the economy was regrouping, rebuilding, and adjusting.

Again, the media told everyone that Reagan was an idiot, and if they would have only listened to their trusted, expert opinions, America wouldn't be in this mess. Basically is what the media always says, 'We the professional media are right, you the ignorant voters are wrong.' 

When Americans went to vote in the 1982 midterms, some had seen enough of the Reagan revolution, or at least the felt it may not be working the way Reagan said it was going to. They voted democrat, and democrats gained 26 seats in the House, but republicans just kept control of the Senate. 

There's a lot of details in the Reagan economic policies that we could cover, but one thing Reagan kept saying is these policies would take a bit of time to work. Was he right? 

Yes, yes he was. 

They did work, and by the time 1984 rolled around, the American economy was booming. Reagan went on to trounce Senator Walter Mondale in the presidential election, winning 49 out of the 50 States. 

So why am I telling you this? Well, one of the good things about getting older, is you become better at pattern recognition. Or, at least you should. The human brain is basically a very intricate, very powerful, patter recognition engine. We look at things, and try to recognize where we might have seen them before. It's how you learn to spot danger, spot opportunity, as you try to imagine the future. It's pretty simple, you either get better at pattern recognition, or you get blasted in the face by reality again and again. 

This brings us full-circle to 2025. 

If you insert President Trump for President Reagan, keep the professional legacy media the same, then add in social media, and a 24-Hour news cycle, your patter recognition should start pinging. 

The problem is the same in many ways, and different in many ways. There is however, one thing that is absolute, and without debate; our economic situation is much worse that America's back in the 1980s. Sure you can say that interest rates are lower, inflation is lower, and unemployment is lower, but those are the short-term indicators. What you terrify you right now isn't the price of eggs, it's the amount of federal debt we owe. That bill is coming due right now. 

In fact, of that 36 TRILLION dollars of the US debt, we are going to have to refinance 9.2 trillion of that in 2025. We will still owe that money, but we need to refinance it. Think of it as being behind on you credit card bill, and when it comes due, you take out another new credit card to pay that monthly payment....

There is a great piece written on Substack written by Tanvi Ratna about this refinancing problem. She also writes about what she thinks Trump is doing, how it might work, and how it might fail. It also covers the Trump Tariff plan as she sees it, and the thinking behind it. It's a very thoughtful piece. 

The Trump economic plan, as I see it (and this is coming from a former working cowboy, so,,,,,) is a way to remake the US economy, and to reshape the world. The one thing that worries me is Americans won't understand that there will be some real short-term pain, as we try to turn our nation around from the disaster it's facing.  

Here are the three issues I've taken in as I've listened to President Trump the last few years. 

1. Manufacturing: We shipped half of our manufacturing industry overseas in the past 30 years. We need to bring that back, along with the jobs, and defense capability that comes with it. 
2. Government Spending: We have grown the government to the point where we are spending more on our government than at any point since WWII. It is also so big, one agency doesn't know what the another agency is doing. It needs to shrink or we be bankrupt in 10 years.
3. Trade Fairness: We are letting the world take advantage of our economy, but that economy is being propped up by debt and borrowing these days. 

1: So let's look at that first point; manufacturing. 

Growing up in the those same 1980s, the economy was different. American made a bunch of stuff back then. Real, tangible materials that you mined, extracted, and refined into materials that you could make into other real products. We made steel, aluminum, and all kinds of things back then. We then refined, smelted, stamped, weaved, mixed, and milled those products into other more refined products. Then we turned those products into US manufactured goods that we sold right here at home and around the world.

The downside to these manufacturing jobs, is the hard work. Not that hard work is a bad thing, I've done plenty of it. From being a working cowboy, building fence, checking cows everyday, to breaking and loading concrete all day in the 100 degree heat. I've done some work that many people wouldn't even consider doing. Then again, I had new family, so off to work I went.

However, if I could make the same money working in an airconditioned office, or working in a coal mine, I'd pick the office. The only problem with those kinds of 'service' jobs is, you only need so many people to shovel paper. 

Unless you are the government; then you invent new paperwork to shovel. This is basically a system where you need to keep the government workforce growing so you can pay for all the wonderful retirement benefits all the retired government employees get. (I will be one soon, so I know of which I speak)

Manufacturing used to employ about 16% of all US workers back in 1990. Today, that number is about half, at 8%. That's a lot of people who used to work in the Midwest, the rust-belt and small-town America. So why isn't the unemployment number higher if we lost all those jobs?

You can look at all kinds of numbers and statistics to try to see where we are these days.  Real, inflation-adjusted wages are about the same for the 50% median income American, from 1990 to now. The lower earners are maybe 1 to 1.5% higher today, but very close. You can look at buying power, home affordability, and all kinds of stats, but here is one statistical number that you should take to heart: The Labor Participation Rate.

In 1990, the LPR was 66.6%. The labor force participation rate is the percentage of the working-age population that is either employed, or actively seeking employment. Today that number is 62.4%. That is why our unemployment number isn't as high as it should be. People just stopped looking for work, and if they are not looking, they are not considered unemployed.

You might say, so what, that's 4%, that not a big deal right? Well, that 4% of the workforce not working comes to about 10 Million people that were working in 1990, that are not working today. That's a big deal. How did we get here? Why are 10 million American's just sitting around? How do they live? How do they pay for rent, food, or Netflix? That's a good question. I wish I had an easy answer. Public benefit programs are growing every year and you can sign up for a bunch of them, but one of the things that made it easier for people to not work was Social Security Disability Insurance.

Of that ten million more Americans not working right now,  four million are on SSDI. How did we get a 64% increase in the number of people receiving SSDI? I wish I knew. I don't think it's because the jobs are harder than they were in 1990. In fact, it's the opposite. There's more we could look into, but remember we have 10 million less working aged adults than we did in the 90s. 

2: How about that second one? The growth of government. 

Another thing I remember from the Econ 101 class I took, in my short stint as a college student, was how to determine GDP. 

The formula is GDP=  C + I + G + (X - M) net exports

(C ) = Consumption (household spending on goods/services)  

( I ) = Investment (business spending on capital, residential construction, inventories)  

( G ) = Government spending (federal, state, local)  

( X ) = Exports (goods/services sold abroad)  

( M ) = Imports (goods/services bought from abroad, subtracted because they’re not domestically produced)

So if you ever want to see some fun math, just review how President Biden tried to keep the US from a recession during his presidency. If the economy is going down, and you have an election coming up, you just borrow and print a few TRILLION dollars. You then hand it out to your friends and contributors, and bam! That G number goes way up. Magic! 

Well, until the bill comes due with 9% inflation.

Here is another fact to take home and ponder. Throughout my life, I have heard from democrats that we spend way too much money on defense. If there are any cuts to had anywhere in the government, that is where they want it cut. Well, at least they used to. Today, the democrats are the pro-war party as they have turned full Neo-Con when it comes to Ukraine war spending. 

Anyway, here is that fact to ponder. Today in 2025, we are spending more federal tax money paying the interest payment on our national debt than we are on the entire defense department. The worse news, is that figure is going to climb as we adjust to the new higher interest rates on borrowed money. 

We need to cut government spending back to where we were a few years ago. If we went back to the 2019 budget numbers, before Covid, all the bailouts, the build-back-better grift, and the borrowing, we could have a balanced budget in no time. But as soon as you want to cut the growth in spending, the media and the democrats (but I repeat myself) will say you are slashing money for poor people and grandma. Even if we froze last year's budget, they would consider it slashing the budget. For democrats, the government always needs to grow. 

3: Let's look at trade fairness. 

The strange thing about growing up in the post WWII world was, as a kid, you didn't know any better. You thought this was the way the world worked, and it had always been this way. Becoming curious about history opened my eyes to the unique world I grew up in. 

When I thought of cars, I thought of American cars. In the 50s, and 60s, America made some of the best cars on the planet. It seemed natural. We had almost invented the car, and and the car factory. Same with bulldozers, refrigerators, electronics, guitars and TV dinners. Our stuff was just the best there was. 

I didn't really understand that after WWII, most of the industrialized world was in ruin, save one nation, the United States. While Europe was a smoldering pile of ruin, and Asia was being rocked by communist expansion, the US had transformed itself into the one place in the world where the top designers, architects, builders, and manufacturers, (along with artists musicians) were making everything the world needed. 

What about trade? Well, America got together with most of the world, and we made them a deal. You can trade with us, and if you oppose communism, try to hold elections every so often, and be pro-American, we will keep the seas free for trade shipping, and stop any incursions from your neighbors. By the 80s and 90s, our economy was so big, a trade deficit with other smaller countries was thought of as the price of admission to the big-peace game. It worked for decades, but that deal has fallen apart. 

Europe, Canada, and many of our NATO allies do not spend the minimum 2% of GDP on their own defense. They know that America will be there to defend them, come hell or high-water. Canada spends about 1.3% of their GDP on defense. They have America sitting next to them, so why should they spend tax-money on defense when you can buy votes with government handouts? 

So we spend 3.38% of our GDP to defend the world, and they place high tariffs on our goods? They place high tariffs on US products so they can keep their inefficient, and mostly corrupt, workers paying taxes to their governments? Why would we keep doing this? 

China is a big player in the world economy, especially since they manufacture so much of what we depend on. All those steel and aluminum plants that closed down in the 2000s, along with everything from ship building to electronics, makes us dependent of people outside the US. That is not good when it comes to televisions, it terrifying when it comes to defense.  

All this boils down to these three things: (at least in my book)

Manufacturing: We need to make things again in our nation, real things. Things you make in factories, not side-hustles working from an app delivering packages and semi-warm food. We need to get our nation back to work, doing important things, not government things, but building things. Tens of thousands of new homes, new bridges, new highways, new water storage dams, new 24/7 power plants for the huge AI driven data centers we will need. 

Government Spending: We need to look at how much our government is spending, and take it back to our 50 year average of spending about 21% of GDP. We are currently at 24% of GDP,. We need to lower that spending back to average. That would be a huge savings. We also need to look at revenue. While we have taxed at higher rates, that hasn't always meant more tax revenue. In fact when you look at the 80s, when Reagan cut taxes, the revenue flowed into the treasury. It was right around 19-20%. We need to sit down with everyone at the dinner table, show them the Visa bills, and the coming bankruptcy, and say, I will cut this if you cut that. I will take heat from side, you take heat from your side, but if we don't, one day we will have to stop paying everyone, or pay them with million dollar bills as we inflate our way out of debt. .  

Trade Fairness: We need to stop letting nations protect their workers while punishing ours. Yes, this is going to cause some upset. Yes, there will be some pain. However, President Trump didn't become a billionaire by not knowing how to negotiate. He will make some great deals early, and tell everyone, the longer you wait to make a fair trade deal, the worse it will be for you. 

Well, that's it for me on this early Saturday. We will see down the road if I saw the pattern correctly or I'm just blind as a bat. 

Winning comes at price. It's a price you must pay to achieve the results you want.

So here we are, not even a month into the 47th presidency and things are happening at such a rapid pace, it's hard to keep up. 

The Border Patrol seems to have shut down illegal immigration on the US-Mexico border to just a trickle. 

Elon Musk and his crew over at DOGE are uncovering the most ridiculous government spending boondoggles you can think up.

ICE is arresting and deporting know criminal illegal aliens by the hundreds, and soon to be thousands.

Panama, Canada, and Mexico quickly came to the negotiating table after the president slapped trade tariffs on them. 

The president's cabinet picks are all being approved in record time. 

It's just a lot of winning. Is it too much winning? No, there is no such thing. There is a bit of caution that I will tell some of my MAGA friends right now. Winning comes at a price.

Take the tariffs kerfuffle that has been in the news. There is always a price to pay when you negotiate large, complex, extremely expensive deals. That is just the way negotiations work. You ask for what you want, they say no. You increase pressure on their position, they retaliate, and back and forth you go. However, when you have a huge economic advantage at the negotiation table, the other side eventually folds and accepts your terms.

We have that huge economic advantage with almost every nation in the world, save one; China. 

Trump is going to go straight into a trade war with China soon, and yes, there will be some pain on our end.

Retail prices will go up on almost everything you buy. From Amazon to WalMart, to your mom and pop store that sells traded goods. The cry from the free-traders in the GOP, and the democrats in the media will be wall-to-wall stories of people who can't afford groceries and heat because of Trump's trade war. 

Will there be people hurt by an increase in prices? Yes, there most certainly will. People are hurt by government policies all the time. I will take this type of pain, as it much different than inflation due to government spending sprees that just buy votes on the short term.

All my free trader friends, will be saying, see I told you. Trump doesn't understand economics and is causing inflation like Biden did. No, this is different. This is like the medicine you must take to get better, even though it tastes terrible and has side effects. 

I also wonder where your outrage was when America's industrial manufacturing industries where shut down and sent overseas these last few decades? Well, those steel workers, auto workers, and factory workers just need to learn get with the times, and learn new skills, right? 

That was real pain, and it's still there in a lot of the rust-belt states, and even in rural parts of blue states. 

Trump sees the world from a different lens that almost anyone in beltway. He looks at the world as a dangerous place, and knows that America once produced everything it needed to lead the world. With the exception of maybe crude oil back in the day. Now that commodity is produced here is abundance. However, our consumer goods, our medicines, so many things we need, are being made overseas and imported to America. 

You may not like Trump's stance on China. You may think, as long as they keep making cheap TVs, clothes, antibiotics, and auto parts, what's to worry about? The issue with having so much of what we use made overseas is the vulnerability to our economy if that manufacturing gets turned off. Not by trade wars, but by other circumstances. 

What could happen to China right? They are an economic juggernaut. They will soon overtake the US as the largest economy. Um, no. Not so fast.

China is looking at a demographic collapse in the next ten years. That's not an opinion, it's just the math. China's one-child policy, it's government movement of rural farmers to cities (where children are a cost, and not free farm labor) and the over reporting of population by the different districts has led to this upcoming collapse. 

In 1980, 81% of China's population lived in rural communities. They were farmers. Only 19% lived in big cities. Today that percentage of big city population is over 66%.

Now let's look at the birth rate. The One-Child policy was a terrible thing in and of itself, but it changed the way the past few generations of Chinese thought about children. They were taught that children were a huge cost to yourself, and to society in general. In 1980, the birth rate in China was 2.7 children per woman. (2.1 is replacement rate) Today that number has dropped off to 1 birth per woman.  
The last part of the puzzle was the overcounting of new children, and population as a whole, by local districts to get more money from the Chinese Communist Party. They overcounted by hundreds of million of people. My whole life, I was told China was the largest nation by population. That stopped being true a decade ago. India is the largest nation by population, but no one actually knows this. 

So what will happen with China when the huge group of older 50-60 year Chinese workers stops working? Who is going to work the industrial factories and manufacturing assembly plants when the much smaller group of teens and twenty year olds comes into play?  In 1980 the median age in China was 20. That's kind of crazy, with so many young people. Today, that number is 40. That's not good.  

The US numbers are not great either. While our median age from 1980 to today has gone up, we started around 30 years old and are now around 38 years old. Our movement from rural farmers to cities happened slowly over the last 100 years. Our birth rate is 1.6 and below replacement level, so we need to start having babies too. 

Anyway, back to China. What could happen to the Chinese manufacturing/assembly economy in the next decade? It could shrink and suffer, and that's not good if you're in the Chinese Communist Party. You have one job, keep the people from a new revolution, and line your pockets while you are in charge. 

They have done both over the past few decades, but this next decade looks like 50/50 crap shoot. Those are not good odds. 

The US and other economic partners are moving our manufacturing from China to other places in the Asian Pacific area. Vietnam, other parts of southeast Asia and India have taken a lot of China's manufacturing industry in the last 5 years. Mexico has too. 

That is really good news, for Mexico and the US. Mexico has lower wages than China does right now, and a better skilled workforce in many instances. We still have to be on the lookout for Chinese owned companies to buy or partner with Mexican companies, and try to work around the US tariffs on specific goods imported from China, just shipped and repackaged as 'products of Mexico'. 

As China's trade partners continue to leave, China has moved into manufacturing their own retail industries. Just go down to Costco, or WalMart and look at high-end TVs. You might see a huge stock of Hisence, and TLC brands, and not quite as many Korean brands like Samsung, or LG TVs these days.  China is making up to 50% of the OLED (high-end) televisions these days. That percentage is growing. 

Now, if we slap a 25% tariff on Chinese owned and manufactured electronics, that will stink for those of you looking the for the cheapest, biggest, TV to upgrade your living room. I'm okay with that. I will pay a bit more or a Korean Samsung, LG, or other brand not made by China. The problem is the make so many different product we use, and need. Talk to someone down at your local hospital and have them check to see where all their products are made.

Last year, we imported 14.9 Billion dollars in Chinese medical equipment. Chinese pharmaceuticals hold another large portion of certain drugs we use. About 80% of the US supply for antibiotics comes from China. Most under patent medicines are still made here, but most generic ones are made in China and India. We are trying to get India up to speed on more pharmaceuticals, so we have more choices, but we need to be smarter. If the world turned upside down tomorrow, from a war, a huge solar flare, or a meteor, or whatever, shouldn't we have this manufacturing on our own shores? 

If I can't get a new TV for two years while we figure out how to set up US manufacturing here, that's one thing. Medicine and pharmaceuticals? I'd like to have the capacity to make those right here. 

So, I know there's a lot to think about, but let me throw one more your way; Artificial Intelligence. 

This one is the game changer. Think of AI like the changes we saw in personal computers, cell phones, and the internet, all wrapped up in a huge package, and made to work seamlessly. But not over three decades, but in three or four years. That's what's a stake here. Everything, every industry, unless you are a Amish farmer or someone living in a cabin deep in the woods, AI is going to change the way the world around you works.

Whatever nation, or group of nations, figures out how to integrate AI the quickest, and with the most seamless integration into all their systems, from defense, to manufacturing, to engineering, to medicine, to figuring out the next iteration of AI, will win this next century. 

We need a new Moon-Shot type endeavor from the private sector towards AI. This will be a huge undertaking. The government needs to watch over this, but stay out of the way. We don't need 18 month delays in permits and regulations building new data centers. We also need to fund real research in this and train the next generation of AI engineers. But we need to get our house in order first, or the Chinese will brute-force and steal their way into the lead.

To win this AI race, we need to clean house at the federal government. 

We need to stop spending money of dumb sh!t.

We need to be able to fire non-performing employees.

Stop the DEI nonsense and hire based on skills and merit.

Start consolidation agencies and departments. 

To do this, we will need to clear away fraud, waste and abuse. That starts by cleaning up our voter rolls, our benefit rolls, and streamline our bureaucratic structure.

Will there be some pain doing this? Absolutely. Is it the terrible tasting medicine, with some bad side effects, that will save us from a slow and painful death? Yes, yes it is. 

Will I have to take some of this medicine? I'm sure we all will, but I'm willing to do this if the ship is heading in the right direction.  

Do I think President Trump is the best captain for the American ship right now?

Yep, I believe he is.  We will see if he can steer the ship the way he wants it to go, or is the ship so damaged by decades of poor management that it just steams in a circle as is takes on water?

Like I say; we will see.

When you figure it out....

 So, I was cruising around the good ol' Tube of You last night and ran across a segment that made a lot of sense to me. It was a few minutes by Greg Gutfeld, who I don't really watch because I don't watch much TV, but he gave a name to something I talk about all the time; The Gell-Mann Effect. 

About twenty years ago, I used to write a Guest Opinion column for my local newspaper. I started writing them when I complained to the then editor Jim Smith. I said the person writing some of the pieces in the paper didn't know what they were writing about. Agriculture, ranching, animal husbandry, etc. He was also running editorials from some of their affiliated newspapers from the bay area. Those pieces had zero context to our more rural community. His answer was something like, Well, if you can write content that people like, I'll publish it. I wrote guest opinion pieces off and on for a few years. It was fun, even though I am a barely functional writer. 

When I was in college at SC, (Solano College. I told you I was a barely functional writer) one of my favorite classes was my media class. The instructor had been in the news/marketing business for years. He was the one who first told me about the Gell-Mann Effect without giving it a name. 

He said we have been taught that everything written in the newspaper is true, and the same for what was shown on the nightly news. He said that the vast majority of articles in a newspaper, especially a local one, is written by someone who knows next to nothing about the nuts and bolts of what they are writing about. They just know how to write. If you know a lot about the subject they are writing on, you will find many, if not most, things are somewhat, or flat-out wrong. Once you realize this, you start to wonder about all the other 'news' pieces they write or cover. Are those stories true? That is the Gell-Mann Effect. 

For you younger folks, newspapers were actual news articles, ads for groceries, cars, clothing, homes, and classified ads, printed on real paper, folded up, and thrown at your front door every morning by a kid on a bicycle. Think of newspapers as whatever app you use for news, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, Linkedin, Tik Tok, Fandango, IMDB, and about twenty more, all folded, and rolled up at your door.  

So anyway, Gutfeld's story was about the recent election, and he put to words something I've been feeling for quite some time. Trump's victory was, in part, a result of the Gell-Mann Effect. People who watch their own brand of 'news', from NPR, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, or just get their news from the left, have been told that Trump is actually Hitler. What's worse, is they were told that anyone who votes for Trump is a Nazi. 

This is where your own brain starts to throw a 'check engine' light to you subconscious. You start thinking, hey, what about my neighbor Sal, and Jessie? I've known them for years, and had dinners at their house. They helped me so much when my mom got sick. They watched the house for us, and were there to talk about everything I was dealing with. They voted for Trump, and they are not Nazis. Hmm. 

Bingo. 

Once you figure out the legacy media's narrative of Trump being Hitler, and half the country who voted for him are Nazis, is all nonsense, you start to wonder what else they are lying about? 

You start remembering the RussiaGate story they pushed for four years that was fake. The FBI did actually spy on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election cycle. They falsified FISA documents to get warrants to tap phones, but you were told by the legacy media that this was a 100% fake story put out by the Trump camp. You remember Hunter Biden's laptop story? Where the FBI knew the laptop was real, it belonged to Hunter Biden, and all the emails and information on it were authentic? Yeah, they knew all that as soon as they got the laptop. 

Yet they told Facebook and Twitter, and all the legacy media, it was Russian disinformation. They told the social media companies to bury any mention of the story on their platforms. They even got 51 intelligence officials to say the story was Russian disinformation. (By the way, have you heard an apology from those 51 'intelligence experts' yet?) 

No one in the legacy media wanted to ask any questions about this story. They ran with because it worked against Trump, and anything, fake or otherwise, that hurt Trump's chances was printed and opined everyday, every month, for years. 

When Elon Musk bought Twitter (now X) he offered a few independent reporters to look into the emails of the Twitter interactions with the federal government and other media. They found the feds were try to get social media companies to bury certain stories that were harmful to the government's narrative on the Covid-19 response. This was daming information of government-influenced censorship. Did you hear much about the Twitter Files on you legacy news feeds? Nope, you sure didn't. 

I could go on and on for the next three hours telling you about the stories the legacy media ran that were mostly, or completely false, but what I want you to come away with is the fact that they actively suppress stories that go against their own political views.  What you don't hear is sometimes more harmful than the things they get half right, or flat-out lie about. 

I will also give out a word of warning to some of my Super-Trumper friends who only listen to Fox News, or NewMax or even Alex Jones. While Fox leans right on their news programs, some of their opinion shows lean pretty far-right. I don't watch Fox, but like the Gutfeld clip I found on YouTube, I know their content. Some of the super-right media sites are garbage. While they do serve up red meat for the Trump fans, they take a lot of soundbites out of context, or cut and paste things to make them sound worse than they are. If they get it wrong, they ignore it. 

Don't trust people who never own up to their mistakes. You can watch the legacy media fail this test in real-time, right now. 

Here's a nickel's worth of free advice for you: Google is not going to help you in getting better news or information. They are the largest legacy media source out there. If you Google the stories I mentioned above, you will need to go a few pages into the searches to get past all the legacy media pieces about how these stories are wrong, or no big deal. It's frustrating for sure.

X (Twitter) is the best place to get information, and weed through news stories. The Community Notes feature is pretty cool. If someone makes a false comparison, or makes an error in a story, users can reply or make a Community Note that gives the other side. 

My point: Start asking questions about things you believe. 

Start asking if they could be wrong, and if so, how wrong? Some of the things I once thought were correct turned out to be wrong, and I've changed my opinion on them. 

One the best things is finding smart, reasonable people, who were once on the other side of a topic, but were moved by an uncomfortable truth to start asking questions. 

I'll give you a bit of warning here, there is a price to pay for this. Once you start asking your side uncomfortable questions, your friends won't want to answer them. They might call you horrible names, and even shut you out of your group. It's not fun, but it's better in the long run. You won't be living in a false world. 

Your reward is living in world as true as you can make it.

0-2.

To my democrat friends: Just a thought, but you might want to force out the leadership of your party right now. I mean before the 2026 election cycle.

You will lose some huge 'campaign money' donors, not that it did you any good this cycle. You will lose lots of the dying legacy media coverage and puff pieces, not that it did you any good this cycle. You will lose lots of Hollywood celebrity party invites, not that that it did you any good this cycle, but you need to clean house. 

You need a party who will listen to its own voters and let them nominate a candidate. You would have had Bernie Sanders in 2016, and while he would have lost, it would have been an honest election. Who you want, against who the other side wants. 

If the democrat machine would have been honest about Biden's mental capacity this time around, and convinced him not run (or forced him out like they did this time) in late 2023, it would have been better for the democrats. Let the party have an open, honest primary and see who they pick. Do you think you folks would have have picked Vice President Harris? She never made it to the first caucus in Iowa in 2020. She's a terrible candidate.

You might have had JFK JR as you candidate. That would have been a very different election. Tulsi may have stayed a democrat, even run with him. Joe Rogan would have endorsed him and swung a huge number of young men to that side. However, the DNC machine would never allow that to happen. 

The very small group of elites who run the DNC machine want only 'trusted' people to run. People who trust those elites, not the American people. 

Unlike the DNC, with their 'Super Delegates' and their total control of the nomination process, the GOP let their voters decide. 

Sometimes you have to lose badly to shake up your leadership. The McCain 2008, and Romney 2012 nominations were the last ones controlled by the establishment GOP. They got their asses kicked. 

In 2016 the people in the GOP, and a good number who didn't have a voice, found a voice. A super loud, obnoxious, voice, but one that is 100% himself, for better and sometimes worse.  

You may not love your next candidate, but if they have a track record you like, and they have actually made something work, or fixed a broken system, that should be your candidate. They may not look like what your party wants. 

They may be a 38 year old Pacific Islander tech guru, or 65 year old Inuit Eskimo who helped turn around her village, then community, then built a thriving business, or a some Iowa pig farmer legislator who loves his family, community and country, and has written some really good laws about farming labor.  It maybe some governor, (do not pick Newsom) or someone who loves to turn things upside-down and make them grow and thrive; pick one of them. 

Republicans already had this battle in 2016. The RNC hated Trump and battled against him. The establishment republicans didn't want Trump. I didn't want Trump, but we got Trump. 

He turned out to be better then all the 'trusted' republicans we had since Reagan. 

How good do you have it?

  (I wrote this a few years back and never published it. You might like it)

So, I like history. All kinds of history; American history, world history, biblical history, ancient history, evolutionary history, and especially military history. 

I have a couple of six-foot bookshelves stuffed full of books. However, these days I also subscribe to Audible. Audiobooks are a great use of my hour commute time. Podcasts are another popular way to consume information or entertainment. I subscribe to a dozen podcasts. Why are these audible transmission modes so popular?

According to some social anthropologists, human beings have evolved to consume information audibly. 

Storytelling has been the principle way to transfer knowledge from individual to individual, individual to group, and on down to future generations since the invention of language.  Writing, in general, and books in particular, are only a few thousand years old. Reading from the written page requires a bunch of things to happen at once. Read the letters, turn them into silently spoken words, then sentences, and ultimately, to form a story.  

Listening to a story is different. You are just listening to those spoken words and turning them into a mental image in your head. Simple stuff.  I just hope with all the changing ways to get your information, books will still remain viable and relevant. I love the smell of a hardback book. That aroma of paper as I leaf through the pages is good for my soul. 

I’m bringing this up because in this age of information overload, we are bombarded with all these different mediums vying for our attention. We have become targets of mass media corporations. We are not really consumers of a product, we are the product. I should say, our attention is the product. We are selling our attention whether we understand that or not. Most of the time, we are giving it away. 

Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, etc. are ‘free’ as they don’t charge you to use their platform. Here’s a hint, if you're not paying to use their product, you are the product. They are selling your profile, likes, clicks, shares and data to someone else. I am guilty here as well. I can burn up a few hours on social media without a thought. I will look up and say, “Wow, where did those two hours go?”

I’m not writing this piece on the ills of social media. There are thousands of well written accounts on the subject. What I’m saying is we need to understand what we are consuming, and understand what we are missing in this consumption. The information we consume today is a constant stream of digital junk food, fast food and leftovers. So what are we leaving out? The healthy stuff. The vegetables and fiber. We need more of a balanced mental diet. We need to start taking in healthy portions of history. 

Now some of you might say, hey I love all the war movies and Downton Abbey, but that’s not what I’m talking about. As much as I enjoy Saving Private Ryan, and Band of Brothers, movies are only a tiny slice, of a small part, of a much bigger picture. They can also whitewash some of the more ugly parts of history. No, I’m talking about understanding where we are as a species, and where we came from. 

What do you know about history? I’m talking about knowing what your life would be like fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, and maybe a thousand years ago. I’m talking about knowing what an absolutely spectacular world we actually live in. Compared to just a few decades, let alone a few centuries ago, we are living in an age of abundance, health, wealth, and peace. Most people think the world right now sucks. Seriously, people think they have it rough. 

People, especially young people, have been trained to look at the world through a certain lens. They see nothing but injustice, racism, patriarchy, greed and suffering. They take in a steady diet of ‘news’ from late-night comedians, Slate, Salon, and Vice. They are being told that we are constantly at the precipice of some great calamity. They are being told that they alone can, and should, solve all the world’s problems. To do that, all they need to do is change everything. 

Change it to what? They’re not sure, but by God, they’re going to do something. Look no further than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to see this principle at work. The solution filled world she creates in her mind has the answers to all America’s woes. However, it can only exist there, in her mind. The real world is far too complex, because it’s filled with people, and people do what they want. It’s also filled with nature that is always trying to kill you.

So, how bad do we have it right now? Really? Compared to what? That would be a good starting point. 

Compared to the rest of the world? No other nation on this planet offers the opportunity to move from abject poverty to wealth and success like America. Zero. If you immigrate here legally, without two nickels to rub together, you can work hard, save and scrimp, and you will soon be out of poverty and experience at least the beginnings of the American dream. Your children can get a scholarship to university and become doctors, engineers and even politicians, if they have the stomach for it. Those who live below the poverty line in America would be considered working class in most places on the globe. We are probably one of the only nations where obesity is a huge health problem among our poorest citizens. 

Many people complain about how unfair everything is right now. Jeff Bezos has billions, and I have student loans and work at Subway. Boo flippin’ hoo. I didn’t tell you to take out student loans for a degree in gender studies, philosophy, or Art History. Why do you want the guy working at the tire shop to pay off your student loans? Sure, there is racism, sexism, and greed, but it’s so much better than it was just within my lifetime. Real hate crimes are so rare in a country of 340 million people, there is a growing trend of inventing your own hate crimes, just to get attention. 

How about fifty years ago, was that any better? 

I know a little something about this, I was a child fifty years ago, but I lived through the late 60s and 70s. I remember the smog, acid rain, and whale hunting. I remember the people fleeing the big cities to get away from the riots, and crime. I remember the gas shortages, Vietnam, Watergate, the crappy cars, and crappy houses they built in the 70s. Women were just starting to make inroads in business, colleges, and society. Minorities were still feeling the sting of racism, and in many places, violence and abuse were a real threat. Although the progress made through the civil rights era was unmistakable, people of color were not truly equal. Not by a long shot, but things were getting better. Homosexuality was really not accepted anywhere. 

In the late 60s and 70s, you worked hard, usually in the manufacturing sector, paid your bills, and taxes. You drank beer with your buddies at bowling league on Saturday night, and went to church on Sunday. Poor people were actually poor. Malnutrition, bad teeth, and violent crime was a real threat if you were living under the poverty line. However, life with money did not mean you were free from suffering. Even if you were a millionaire, if you had a heart attack, you died. If you had cancer, you died. Your life expectancy was 66.

What about 100 years ago? If you were a young man walking around 100 years ago in America, that meant you made it through World War One. Congratulations, seriously, that was an accomplishment. WWI was the first full scale modern war. No one understood that when the war kicked off in 1914. 

There were still cavalry troops with lances and sabers in 1914. They were trained to do what cavalry troops had done for thousands of years: Follow up an attack on the enemy in retreat, and slaughter them. Well, when you send your cavalry to attack a retreating enemy in 1914, and that enemy has those new-fangled machine guns, your cavalry was going to be shot to ribbons. They learned that lesson the hard way.

Think of the WWI trench-warfare. Huge armies with millions of men dug into the earth a few hundred to a few dozen yards apart, fighting for years. The modern technologies of massed artillery fire, machine guns, barbed wire, poison gas, airplanes, and later tanks, were all new to the battlefield. It took time and experience to know how to fight with them, and defend against them. That experience was gained through the slaughter of 15-19 million young men. If you were a man, 40 or younger in Europe during WWI, you were sent to the front to fight or die. How’s that patriarchy working out for you? 

Think about being a soldier on the Western Front for a second. You’re living in a trench for months at a time. Driving rain or oppressive heat, you’re in that trench. The stench of thousands of decaying corpses just a few yards away must have been revolting. There were no toilets. When there was action, you would be in the front lines for weeks, crapping in the same trenches you were living in. 

Let’s say you lived through the war. Hooray! You made it! Now you can get back to your life. However, just as the war comes to a close, there is another killer waiting for you; the Spanish Influenza of 1918. 

This time, death was not selective. Although it killed more children and old people, it was gender neutral. It killed 50-100 million people world wide. Six percent of the earth’s population died in one year. Around 675,000 died from that flu in the United States alone. People didn’t go outside their houses. Kids didn’t go outside to play. People just got sick, and then died. 

Just a few more tidbits from a hundred years ago: 85% of men over the age of14 were in the labor force. Today, it’s 69% of men over 16. The average worker worked 55 hours per week. The chances of being killed on the job was thirty times more than it is today. Most women didn’t work, and those who did, were often teachers. They worked for less money than their male counterparts. Your life expectancy was 53 for men, 54 for women.

What about a thousand years ago, living in 1019, the Middle Ages? What would that be like? To sum it up, it would suck, that’s what it would be like. 

In those times, no matter where you were on the planet, you were either nobility, a peasant, or slave. There was no middle class. If you were a peasant, you farmed daylight till dark to eke out a living and pay your taxes to your feudal master, King, Emperor, Sultan, or whoever was in charge of your land. You didn’t actually own your land, the King, or person in charge did. 

If you were a man, you worked, all day, every day, sunup to sundown. Unless your King or Emperor declared war on the king in the neighboring land. Then you went off to fight or die. You hoped you would be victorious, so the enemy peasants wouldn’t come to steal your wife and sell your children as slaves. If you were a woman, you gathered firewood, cooked, tended to the children, and hoped your husband wouldn’t die in some fool war. Even in the rare times of peace, if your ox died, or you broke your leg, there was a good chance you would starve to death. Life expectancy was around 30, so at least your suffering didn’t last long. 

What I’m getting at is we don’t know how good we have it. Mainly because we are not being taught these things in schools. History classes today are about how evil we were in the past, especially if you are American. 

Yes, most of our founders owned slaves, and we screwed over the Native Americans time after time, when we weren’t outright killing them. Look, all these things are true. However, we are teaching our kids to look at the past through our ultra-modern lens. A great way to think about this is; you imagine you would have been one of the ‘good guys’ in the past, but there is a much greater chance that you would have been one of the ‘bad guys’ because almost everyone was. 

America did not invent slavery. It’s been around since Neanderthals were painting Mammoths on their cave walls. So, were Jefferson and the gang guilty of founding our nation with slavery still a going concern in the southern states? Yes.  If they hadn’t compromised with those supporting the abolishment of slavery in the northern colonies, we would have never become a nation. It was a terrible compromise at the time, but the northern states thought slavery would eventually be abolished, just as it had been in England. 

In a strange turn of history, Eli Whitney and the Cotton Engine (Gin) would breathe new life, and profits, back into slavery to keep it alive for another few decades. It would take half a million dead Americans to abolish slavery, but Americans did it. The blood and carnage of the Civil War was the price America had to pay for that compromise at Philadelphia in 1776. 

The Native Americans had it even worse. As stupid as it sounds, to a young and ever expanding nation, “The Indians” were always in their way. It started off with Pilgrims saying, “Hey, we just want to get along with you Natives, so please don’t kill us or burn down our little settlements.” In a few generations, it was the Natives who were asking, “Hey, I know you guys have a lot more guns and people, and at this point we just want to live, so can you stop murdering us?”

Today there is also a dangerous narrative out there, I call it the ‘Disney-talking-raccoon’ narrative. The last few generations have been taught about the Native Americans through movies, not history lessons. In those cartoons and movies, life before the pre-white invasion of the Americas was glorious for the Native peoples. They all lived in harmony with nature, and each other. There was no greed, racism, rape, murder, or violence. All those bad things were brought over with Columbus, or in the cargo hold of the Mayflower. This is completely untrue. 

People are tribal. All people. We have evolved over the last ten thousand years to thrive in small groups of a few dozen to a few hundred. This was just as true for the Native Americans as it still is today in Northern Waziristan. There is an old Bedouin saying, passed down through millenia. Me, against my brothers. Me and my brothers against my cousins. Me and my brothers and my cousins against the world.” That mindset is universally true. If you don’t believe me, just check out your Facebook feed. You’re either a “True American patriot” trying to save America, or a “Progressive” trying to save democracy ... Back to the Indians... 

The Native American tribes were killing, stealing, and enslaving their fellow Native kinsmen long before Columbus set sail. The histories of the Native people are filled with raiding within tribes and between tribes. 

 Much of the beautiful imagery we have of Native Americans today, especially the Plains Indians, are from the post-Columbus era. Native American hunters, riding swiftly on their painted horses, flinging arrows into stampeding buffalo herds. This way of life for the Great Plains Indians was only a recent discovery. Before Cortez lost a few bands of horses he brought to the American Southwest, the Native Americans on the Great Plains were struggling to survive.

 When those wild horse herds grew and drifted north, they completely changed the way of life for all the native tribes. 

Before the horse, you were on foot. You could only move as fast as the slowest member of the tribe. You had to carry everything of value on your back, everywhere you went. You had to stalk you game. If the buffalo’s migration path moved a hundred miles from year to year, you had to find them, on foot, or starve. The “invention” of the horse was truly life changing. You could ride fifty miles in a day. You could scout for game, see where your rival tribes were camped, make war on non-horse tribes, and maybe even more importantly, you had leisure time. 

You could make semi-permanent camps, ride out to find your food, and fight your enemies far away from your home. You could afford to keep your elders around, and gain from their knowledge. You could have more children, take more wives, and enjoy some time laying around and contemplating life. Small bands of tribes became mighty nations ruling huge swathes of the West. However, those tribes who didn’t adopt that nomadic, horse centered way of life, were killed, captured, or driven off the plains by those who did. The horse was a game changer. Just read up on the history of the Comanche. 

It’s sort of tragic, when we hear the word “Indian” we think of a people living a certain way of life. One that would not have been possible without those horses who wandered away from the Spanish Conquistadors. 

Again, what I’m trying to say is we are stuck in a binary way of thinking these days. Good versus bad. Anyone who doesn’t think like I do, isn’t just wrong, they’re a terrible person. They need to be stopped, or even punched in the face. This is craziness. We simply can’t look at a situation without understanding how we got here. What forces drove us, or guided us to this point?  Has anything like this happened before? Are there any lessons we can learn from history that might save us a tragedy or two? 

  

I guess it comes down to we are all just human beings and we are all ego-centric. Our world is what matters to us. What happened in the past doesn’t matter, unless I can figure out how to blame the past for my failures. Many think the world is stacked against them. On both the Left and the Right. Each side has their Boogieman. 

Boogiemen are always a bit more tricky than what they appear to be on the surface. Each Boogieman, no matter how crazy their story, has a bit of truth nestled inside. They all have a history. We should learn it, and know it. That way we can understand how they got there, and how we got here… .

Wednesdays With Walt

So, one of the things I used to do, back before the Book of Faces and IG took over the world of us oldsters, was write a few short pieces each week here on my blog. 

I think I started this thing in 06'? Somewhere around there. 

I had a little bit of everything on here. Humorous stories, (well, to me anyway) thoughts on family, politics, religion, or just life in general. 

I have gotten away from it for years now, as it's just so much easier to post an article, or a meme.....

Well, I'm going to get back to posting more personal pieces, in the form of video content. 

I'll try to get these up at least once a week, on Wednesdays. 

Look out for them.

It may be a trainwreck.

It may be something you like. 

It may be something you disagree with and can't watch. 

Whichever way it goes, they will be my thoughts, and as always, I will try to keep the conversation moving forward. Towards understanding, towards growth, and becoming a better version of ourselves. 

Stay tuned. 

The Biden Recession is here.

The Biden Recession is here.

I told a friend of mine this back in April.
I said it would just take a few months for the numbers to come in and catch up.

Recessions are reactions, and reflections of financial reality, along with people's emotions. The annual inflation rate is sitting right under double digits, as gas, food, energy, and everything else keeps going up. Inflation is about double the rate of wage growth. That's not good.

This one is kind of a one-off recession. The unemployment rate is low, which is not standard in recessionary times, however, we are still about a full percentage rate under the pre covid Labor Partition Rate. That's over a million fewer Americans working compared to the booming economy of 2019.

When you add trillions and trillions of dollars the federal government borrowed from your children and grandchildren thrown all over place to 'boost' the economy, you get what we have now; Inflation. Too much money chasing too few goods. 

The Federal government, first under Trump, dumped 900 billion in 'Covid Relief' cash into the economy. That was enough. We should have stopped. 

Once Biden was elected, he and his newly elected democratic controlled congress, dumped another 1.9 Trillion in 'Covid Relief' cash into the economy. 

Thank the lord for democratic senator Joe Manchin, who would not approve another 2 Trillion in wish-list borrowing/spending, or we would be in worse shape right now.

The GOP is licking its chops about the upcoming election, but they are just waiting for November. They are not telling America what they will do if they get control of the House and maybe the Senate. This is a mistake.

I know when your opponent is drowning, you just let him sink, but right now the GOP should be acting. They should have a plan. They should be telling people what that plan is. I have real doubts the republicans in leadership are up for the battle ahead.

Even the Super Trumpers are all waiting for Trump to announce his candidacy for 2024. I think he is part of this problem with the GOP. He is still solely focused on how the election was stolen from him. Even if you believe this, he's not out there stating what he will do, he just keeps saying he was screwed over in 2020. People who are having trouble paying for the higher prices on everything don't care about Trump. They want someone to say, this is how I will fix it.  

A real leader would be saying, if I were running the show, I would do this, that, and enacting these others policies. What are the exact things the republicans would do to turn things around? Some of those plans will not be popular, but necessary. Will they be willing to take these risks and make some unpopular opinions to get the economy back on track?

Future House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is a mild mannered, go along-get along politician. He is not a leader, he's a fund raiser. Not that those folks aren't important, but that's not the guy you need to battle the democrats and the media (I repeat myself) for the last two years of the Biden/Harris administration.

The next few months are going to be interesting to be sure.

 
Will the democrats dump Biden after November, with some Long-Covid diagnosis? Will they let VP Harris run the lame duck session two years, then come up with a new nominee? She is a known quantity in her own party. A quantity they know they absolutely cannot win with.

It will be interesting.