Nothing succeeds like excess - Rolls-Royce edition

 

I'm still giggling at a highly sarcastic and snarky article about how truly over-the-top a personalized Rolls-Royce luxury car can become.  A tip o' the hat to the anonymous reader who sent me the link.  Here's just one paragraph to whet your appetite.

Rolls-Royce says the BLACK BADGE GHOST GAMER was "delivered to a tech entrepreneur", which somehow surpasses the American dog mom buyer of the SPECTRE BAILEY for obviousness. It also explains why the new owner wasn't worried about what women would think of his new car, because meeting a girl will be a theoretical concern for his entire life. Rolls-Royce, I should note, does not specify that the commissioning buyer is a man, but I am dead certain a woman's hand did not touch this car at any point in its construction.

There's much more at the link.  I won't steal the author's thunder by reproducing it here;  and besides, you really need to see the pictures to appreciate the length to which some car owners will go.  Fortunately, they can pay Rolls-Royce (a lot!) to take them there.

Go read the whole thing.

Peter

He has the right of it

 

Aesop, whom we've met in these pages on many occasions, is back from his blogging hiatus and demonstrating that sarcasm, acerbic wit, and not giving a damn do, indeed, convey points of view very well.  Here he is discussing the US dollar and fiat currency in general.

Wages since 1985 have cratered. Case in point, my parents' combined household income in 1985 was at the 50th percentile at the time, i.e the mid-point, nationally. Or notionally. Mine is currently at the 90th percentile nationwide, all by my ownself, IOW, better than 90% of US households. But for me to have the purchasing power they enjoyed near the household median in 1985, my paycheck would need to be larger than it is by seven- to ten-fold. IOW, I make 500% of what mom and pop did, yet the purchasing power of my income is only about 40% of what theirs was then. That's how much nothing my fiatbux "Real wages" command currently, and how badly "Real wages" have dropped.

Gold is gold, which is why the spot price is USD$4500/oz as I write this, compared to +/- USD$300 in 1985. That means a dollar in 2026 is worth less than 7% in real terms what it was 40 years ago.

. . .

For Common Core grads, that means your dollar now is worth less than 5/1000ths - 0.005% - of what a dollar was worth in 1932. ($1 x 0.065 x 0.07 = 0.00455. QED) A dollar currently is worth less, in real terms, than the cost for the ink and paper to print it. Maybe write that down on your hand in Sharpie, lest ye forget. We don't need zinc pennies anymore, because $1 bills are the new 1/2¢ coin. And the only people who've figured that out are EVERYONE who's selling you anything, worldwide, and why all your s***, from cars to houses to Happy Meals,  has zoomed in price. Gold hasn't zoomed. Your dollars are simply worth Jack, and S***. That's how inflation works, with the Treasury printing fiatbux three shifts a day, and inflating the unbacked money supply by trillions, year after year. Fun times, dead ahead. 

. . .

This reality is why Fiatbux - dollars, francs, yen, renminbi, whatever - are all finely engraved toilet paper. Don't make me do a retard crayon talk here. The only things that have cratered harder than "real wages" since 1985 are Russian armored regiment performance, or possibly Minnesota fraud investigations. Even Catholic church child abuse investigations have improved more than real wages since 1985. To suggest otherwise makes CNN economic reporters and hosts on The View sound wise. 

. . .

Sometime between tomorrow and death, most of the world is going to discover firsthand what the inhabitants of Weimar, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela all learned about financial reality. It isn't going to be pretty. In a Wile E. Coyote running off the cliff kind of way. Mind the drop.

Just saying.

There's more at the link.

Of course, he's saying nothing new to those of you who've been following our discussions on this blog over the past few years.  We most recently addressed the problem less than a week ago.  Nevertheless, there are relatively few people, in my experience, who actually understand the issues and/or will reorient their lives in such a way as to live according to reality as it truly is.  Most people will continue to spend money, not on things of lasting worth or that will retain their value, but rather on what the Bible calls "riotous living":  weekends in Vegas, fashionable clothes, fancy frou-frou imitations of coffee, and so on.  If most people would spend on true necessities what they spend every month on such fripperies, they could prepare themselves and their families for hard times and sleep easier at night.  However, most don't bother.

If you want a glaring example of evidence about our present situation, it's actually the absence of a piece of evidence.  It's simply this:  What happened to the audit of US gold reserves in Fort Knox that we were promised?  Where is it?  Where are the results?  The subject has literally vanished from view.  My conclusion is that it's being deliberately suppressed;  and if that's the case, then I can only assume that our gold reserves simply aren't there any more.  Where they are, and/or what happened to them, I have no idea:  but if we had them, there's no reason at all why we, the people who (in theory) own them, just as we own (hah!) our government, should not be told about them.  I'm pretty sure the powers that be understand full well that if they aren't there, they no longer underpin the value (such as it is) of the US dollar, so they'd rather ignore them and pretend the problem doesn't exist.  Trouble is, after we've been lied to and misled so often by so many administrations, nobody with two or more working brain cells trusts the deafening silence which is all we hear about the subject.

(If you think differently, I have this bridge in Brooklyn, NYC I'd like to sell you.  It's beautiful!  You'll make a mint out of charging people tolls to cross it!  Price on application.  Cash only, please, and in small bills.)

Oh, well . . .

Peter

A very sobering statistic

 

This headline caught my eye yesterday:

Day 1,419: The Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Just Surpassed Soviet War With Nazi Germany

This week has marked another grim milestone in the nearly four-year long Russia-Ukraine war. The conflict has just entered its 1,419th day - which means it has officially surpassed the entirety of the historic Soviet campaign against invading Nazi Germany, which lasted 1,418 days from June 1941 to May 1945.

Red Army forces eventually drove Nazi troops back from the Volga River all the way to Berlin, before seizing the German capital. But in today's war, the 1,419th day is just another in a long one in a tragic and grinding war of attrition, where it is believed each side has lost literally hundreds of thousands.

. . .

On both sides, a whole generation of young men is being wiped out.

There's more at the link.

We too often focus on the geopolitical and/or military and/or strategic and/or statistical aspects of the Russia-Ukraine war.  However, that misses the human tragedy that is playing out for both countries.

All nations involved in the two World Wars lost a significant proportion of their brightest and best young men.  After those wars, their absence was noteworthy in that the performance of most of those countries (in any sphere you care to name) was less than expected, and lower than pre-war forecasts would have anticipated.  My father, who fought in World War II, often said that the reason Britain descended into socialist chaos so fast after the war was that too many of the future leaders who could have kept her on track were dead.  Leaders tend to make themselves vulnerable simply by leading, because they're priority targets in war.  An army without effective leaders at all levels - NCO, junior officer, field officer, etc. - is a losing army, and, by extension, so is the nation that uses it.

We don't know what the future holds for either Russia or Ukraine, but we do know for certain that a lot of their young men aren't going to be there to help them.  Both countries will suffer from this loss for decades to come.

May the dead of both sides be forgiven their sins, if that is possible, and may they rest in peace.

Peter

"Fifty people control the culture"

 

So says Ted Gioia, whom we've met in these pages before.  Here are a couple of excerpts from his long and interesting article.

After three decades of total connectivity, here’s where we stand:

• Four movie studios still control Hollywood.
• Four subscription platforms account for two-thirds of home movie streaming.
• Three major record labels own most of the hit songs.
• Five publishers account for 80% of the US book market.
• Just one company controls 60% plus of the US audiobook business.
• Etc. etc.

During this same period, print media collapsed—thousands of newspapers and magazines simply disappeared. Online media survived, but just two companies (Alphabet and Meta) now swallow up most of the ad revenues.

And here’s where it gets even worse. If an indie media outlet wants to attract some of this ad money, it needs to reach readers—but it relies on those same two companies for access. To compete with Google you need help from Google.

It’s a mystery to me why this is legal. But it is.

Google is already squeezing digital publishers like they’re mangoes at a Jamba Juice. Publishers have already lost 25% of their traffic from Google, and fear that number might soon reach 60%.

The concentration of power at Google is mind-blowing. It controls around 90% of search traffic. All that total connectivity we envisioned in the early days of the web is mostly reliant on this one company.

You can try to bypass it with apps. But guess what? Two companies control most of the app store business—and one of them is (again) Google.

Can you see what’s happened? Power in the digital world is even more concentrated than in the real world.

Just one company controls around 40% of online shopping. Two companies control two-thirds of US music streaming. The same is true elsewhere online. Because of network effects, no new entrant can compete effectively against the dominant incumbents.

If you take the CEOs of all these businesses—in movies, books, media, etc.—you could fit them in [a] single school bus, with seats left over.

There's more at the link, including more details on the "favored fifty" and how much they control.

That's a truly scary thought.  I knew that five companies controlled almost all TV networks, and a few giant publishers controlled "traditional" book publishing - but I hadn't realized how far that level of concentration had spread.

What it means, of course, is that if anyone wants to do anything that the "favored fifty" (or enough of them, at any rate) would rather not see succeed, they can throttle it to the point of strangulation without even raising a sweat.  If they don't publish it, nobody will be able to access it.  If they don't publicize it, nobody will know about it.  If it becomes any sort of a threat, they can buy it with their pocket change and simply shut it down.  The developer or author or owner won't be able to refuse their offer, because he/she/they will go broke if they don't.

A prime example may be seen in Minneapolis and Minnesota right now.  All the focus of the news media is on ICE's law enforcement activity there - ignoring the truly massive fraud investigations going on into multiple aspects of the state's government, which look likely to dwarf anything that's happened elsewhere.  (California, where investigations are just beginning, might take the crown there, but it's too early to tell yet.)  Most of the powers that be in the news and social media circles are shutting down anything that goes against the "party line".  (That's also why they're so eager to silence Elon Musk and X [formerly Twitter] - because he allows people to speak freely.  They daren't allow that on their platforms, and they're going to do their best to silence any that do.)

Can anything be done about this concentration of power and influence . . . or is it too late?  I fear the latter may be true, because the "favored fifty" can buy any unprincipled Congressional representative or Senator (which means a goodly proportion of them) and prevent restrictive laws from being passed.

Any solutions come to mind, dear readers?  If so, please share them with us in Comments.  (Please do not suggest actions that are criminal.  I won't allow this blog to turn into a bloodbath, theoretical or otherwise.)

Peter

Minneapolis has been planning its insurrection for a long time

 

Through a couple of links on the Internet, I came across this tweet from Insurrection Barbie.  I've checked out some of the references she gave, and they're legitimate.  I'm going to reproduce it in full here, because I think it deserves the widest circulation.

Minnesota has spent years building an infrastructure of ICE watch patrols, NGO backed rapid response teams, and politically wired nonprofits that can flip from ordinary life to street mobilization in minutes. 

The key to Minnesota’s rapid mobilization is not Twitter activism. It is an on the ground surveillance and response network that local reporters have already documented in detail. A Star Tribune investigation into the “organized resistance to ICE” in Minnesota reads like a field manual for modern grassroots intelligence operations.​

In south Minneapolis, volunteers spend hours driving what they openly call ICE patrols. Phones are mounted on dashboards. Every sighting of a suspicious SUV, every cluster of federal jackets, is recorded and dropped into Signal and WhatsApp groups that run silently in the background of daily life.​

Those chats are not small. A single Spanish language group described by local reporting grew from a few dozen members to hundreds as the federal crackdown began. One message that ICE is at a gas station, grocery store, or apartment complex can draw a crowd in minutes.​

Volunteers position themselves near schools, mosques, and high risk housing, phones ready. Their job is to film, warn, and, when they choose, physically interpose themselves between agents and targets.​

When roughly 2,000 federal agents arrive in a region that has spent years quietly building an anti enforcement machine, confrontation is not a question of if but when. 

The sequence looks like this:

• ICE surge and visible raids trigger heightened patrols and chat activity.
• A lethal incident happens. Video, rumors, and initial reports hit group chats and local media at the same time.
• ICE watch networks push urgent alerts, including locations such as the Whipple Federal Building and specific hotels.
• Within hours, local NGOs and national groups issue public calls to action. Protest times and locations spread across social media and encrypted channels simultaneously.

One organization appears repeatedly in any serious look at Minnesota’s anti ICE apparatus: COPAL, short for Comunidades Organizando el Poder y la Acción Latina. COPAL is not just another advocacy group. It runs a formal immigrant defense “rapid response” program that sits at the heart of Minnesota’s ICE watch system.

By late 2025, COPAL’s immigrant defense program had trained more than 10,000 people, a staggering number in a single state. Those trainees do not just sit at home. They plug directly into the Signal chats, patrol rotations, and rapid response networks that are now colliding with ICE in Minnesota’s streets.

The Vice President of COPAL is a DACA recipient who sits on the Board of Directors as well. His name is Edwin Torres DeSantiago and he has served on the leadership teams for the campaigns of:

    1. Tim Walz
    2. Peggy Flanagan
    3. Senator Tina Smith
    4. Senator Amy Klobuchar

He also sits on the Board of Trustees for the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, showing his integration into elite institutional circles as well as movement politics.

They have a direct earmark from leading Democrats. 

COPAL publicly credits Representative Ilhan Omar and Senator Amy Klobuchar for securing federal funds for COPAL and partner ACER to develop the Primero de Mayo Workers Center in Minnesota’s 5th District.

COPAL’s own statement thanks Omar and Klobuchar for their leadership and notes that these federal dollars will be invested in worker organizing and community power on Lake Street.

That also explains why the anti-ICE demonstrations ramped up so sharply just as Minnesota's Governor Tim Walz was being pilloried for turning a blind eye to such mega-scale corruption and misuse of taxpayer funds over so many years.  ICE's activities provided a distraction around which left-wing opinion could mobilize, and use it as a smokescreen to divert attention to Federal and other investigations of the missing billions of dollars in entitlement and aid funding.  The news media has, in large measure, lapped it up.  Independent and social media appear to be continuing the investigation, but are battling to publicize what they're finding, because every major news outlet is "distracted" from the subject (and, since most of them are themselves left-wing or progressive in orientation, are likely grateful for the excuse).

Thanks to Insurrection Barbie for a very enlightening tweet.  I'll be following her on X from now on.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 294

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

Let's have a little more classical guitar.  Miguel Rincón is a multi-talented performer on baroque and Renaissance instruments, including "Renaissance lute, Baroque lute, Baroque guitar, Vihuela, Chitarrone and Archlute".  He's one of my favorite performers.

Let's start with his performance of Santiago de Murcia's Fandangos, from the composer's 1730 collection Codex Saldívar.  The guitar is a modern reproduction of a 5th century original.

Next, a twofer for the theorbo, a member of the lute family with a greatly extended neck and two pegboxes.  First is Robert de Visée's Passacaille from 1699, and then Giovanni Kapsberger's Passacaglia from 1640.  This theorbo is a modern reproduction, based on a design from the 14th century.

Melchior Neusidler was born in Nuremberg in 1531.  He was a famous lutist of his day, composing many pieces as well as performing.  Here's his Ricercare Terzo, performed on a modern reproduction of a 7th century lute.

And finally, two of my favorite pieces for classical baroque guitar.  Here's Santiago de Murcia's Tarantelas, also from his 1630 Codex Saldívar, and Gaspar Sanz's Canarios from 1674.

A lovely way to start the day, no?

Peter

The organizers behind the anti-ICE protests

 

Following this morning's first article, in which I argue that we're seeing a deliberate attempt to turn illegal immigration into a cause célèbre like George Floyd's death in 2020, City Journal has this exposé of one of the driving forces behind that attempt.

The People’s Forum is a “movement incubator” and “a home” for over 200 left-wing groups. Its Manhattan location offers “co-working space, conference rooms, a theater for film screenings, a media laboratory, a lending library, and [the] People’s Café,” as well as an art space, “ideal for art builds, poster making, screen printing.” Part of what makes the organization so quick to respond is that outsourcing isn’t necessary—everything is in-house.

. . .

The group has drawn congressional scrutiny for its behavior and alleged Chinese connections. Last year, Senator Chuck Grassley contacted the Department of Justice about TPF’s “reported Chinese Communist Party ties.” Representative Jason Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, urged the IRS to revoke TPF’s tax-exempt status, citing its role in “inciting riots and violence, supporting illegal activity, and conducting other activity contrary to the public good.”

Elected officials are right to worry. One of TPF’s most radical allies is Nodutdol, a pro-North Korean organization that hosted its end-of-year fundraiser at TPF’s space. In April 2025, TPF hosted a Nodutdol-facilitated event on “Socialism and Sovereignty” in what it referred to simply as “Korea,” in which it denounced “the constant demonization of North Korea” and deemed “reunification” of the Koreas “a vital front in the global anti-imperialist struggle.”

Newer organizations also rely on The People’s Forum as a volunteer hub. That includes groups like ICE Out of New York, which has staged direct actions, such as a disruptive protest inside a Manhattan Home Depot over the corporation’s failure to condemn deportations occurring on its properties.

. . .

While TPF is based in Manhattan, its influence extends far beyond Gotham. Its classes use a hybrid format, allowing anyone with an Internet connection to participate. TPF’s in-house press and bookstore, 1804 Books, prints, publishes, and distributes all manner of “socialist literature and revolutionary theory.” And as it fundraises for a major renovation, the group’s reach and operational capacity appear poised to expand.

This weekend’s rapid, coordinated protests make one thing clear: the anti-capitalist movement is growing. The People’s Forum is just one node in a massive militant network that opposes the American experiment. Officials must keep watch—and when lawbreaking occurs, take action.

There's more at the link.

Friends, that's just one group, in one city.  There are literally hundreds, possibly thousands, of smaller groups in most liberal left-wing cities, and they're all fed by "umbrella" organizations such as The People's Forum.  George Soros and his Open Society Foundations is another funder and coordinator of such activities, as is Hansjorg Wyss and his eponymous Wyss Foundation and the Berger Action Fund.  There are many more like them.  They're pouring hundreds of millions of dollars every year into US politics in an attempt to derail the Trump administration's policies, and prepare to take back political power as quickly as possible.

They're all funding and organizing and coordinating the anti-ICE activities we're seeing on our streets.  They're all doing their best to make it impossible to control those activities, by any means necessary.  We haven't yet seen ICE officers ambushed and assassinated while doing their duty, but I think it's only a matter of time until we do.  After all, from their insular and blinkered perspective, ICE just killed one of their own protesters, so such a response would be no more than ICE deserves.

Tragically, such extremism is beginning to make its presence felt on the right, conservative wing of US politics as well.  Remember Newton's Third Law of Motion?  "Every action causes an equal and opposite reaction."  Extremism begets more extremism, swinging and see-sawing to and fro.  Most of the victims don't really care that much about the extremes - they just got in the way.  They're useful cannon fodder to be exploited for propaganda purposes.  The BBC went so far as to headline, "Two starkly opposed Americas laid bare by deadly ICE shooting".

We are not, repeat, not a United States at this time.  We're far from it.  We can't expect everyone to support common-sense courtesy and decency, because few extremists are willing to do so.  That puts every moderate in the cross-hairs of one or other (or both) sides.

Forewarned is forearmed.

Peter

Shades of 2020... are we seeing George Floyd redux on the left?

 

When it comes to politics, I'm not a great believer in coincidences.  When headlines, proclamations and exhortations pop up like weeds around the same subject, there's always some form of coordination behind them.  If anyone denies that, they're most likely part of the coordination effort.

That's what we're seeing now in connection with ICE's immigration enforcement:  a concerted, organized effort to paint the agency as evil, and its agents as villains and demons, and to use both as levers to attack President Trump.  It's shades of the George Floyd riots all over again.  Consider these headlines (and click on any one to read the article concerned):

• Renee Nicole Good was Minneapolis ‘ICE Watch’ ‘warrior’ who trained to resist feds before shooting
• Crockett warns of nationwide protests over ICE shooting: 'State-sanctioned execution'
• WALZ’S REBELLION: Minnesota Governor ... Threatens to Activate National Guard Against Federal Law Enforcement
• ‘Stoking the Grievance Industry’: Leftist Groups Mobilize After ICE Shooting in Minneapolis
• Chaos!: Democrats Use Minneapolis Shooting to Push Their Anti-Trump 2026 Campaign Theme
• Just how insane did Democrats become on immigration?
• Who Is Helping Low IQ Migrants Defraud American Taxpayers?

Those are just a few examples of the torrent of articles (from both left and right wing authors and sources) about the present political and social situation.

If you can't see parallels between the riots of 2020 and those of 2026, I fear you're living in cloud cuckoo land.  The left, progressive wing of US politics is trying to whip up fear, anxiety and doubt around the issue of illegal aliens and illegal immigration (although they're very careful never to use, or accept the legitimacy of, either of those terms).  They want to make it a standard around which to rally support, and to undermine the policies and actions of the Trump administration. To achieve that end, demonstrations and riots, public violence, even looting and trashing other people's property, are merely tools in their toolbox.  The "restraints" of law, common decency, and ethical and moral behavior are a joke to them.  They use those things against those who believe in them.

In South Africa we used to say that the left wing (meaning, in that country, the anti-apartheid forces during the 1980's) were trying to make the country ungovernable.  To a considerable extent, they succeeded, leading to that country's first-ever democratic elections in 1994.  They used violence, controlled and uncontrolled, as just another method of applying pressure.  It cost us tens of thousands killed, possibly hundreds of thousands - we'll never know - and they still haven't stopped.  Stress kills, even after many years and many miles.  (See, for example, my 2008 article about the death of a good friend.)  I'm convinced that my heart attack in 2009, out of the blue with no warning, was just such a delayed-effect reaction to all those years.

With that experience behind me, I can say with absolute confidence that precisely the same tactics (particularly intimidation and aggression) are being used against conservatives, and against law enforcement officers and agencies (with particular emphasis on the Department of Homeland Security and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency).  The lyrics are different, but the tune is the same.  The fatalities here are a lot less, too . . . for now.

Folks, remember how disrupted things became in 2020 and 2021?  Expect it to happen again.  If you live in cities (and I sincerely hope many of you heeded my earlier warnings and left big cities behind you), you're going to be right on the spot.  Think it won't affect you?  I have news for you . . . the success of the left depends on you feeling their wrath personally, and being afraid of them, and therefore voting the way they want in order to "make it stop".  They won't leave you alone.

If you're still city-bound (and even if you're not), pay extra attention to the following:

• Make sure your emergency preparations, food and ammo stocks, etc. are as ready as possible.  Expect there to be another run on firearms and ammunition, just like 2020/21, as those who hadn't prepared in time try to do so at short notice.  If your own supplies are a little threadbare, beat the rush and stock up now, while prices are still relatively low.  Service and lubricate your firearms, and load your spare magazines!  There's nothing quite so useless in a defensive emergency as an unloaded magazine... or, perhaps, an empty fire-extinguisher when your house is burning.  (You do have fire-extinguishers - quality ones, of a reasonable size - in your home, don't you?  When did you last check them?)
• Design, prepare and practice emergency drills with your spouse and children, and anyone else who lives with you.  Be ready for an emergency if one arrives unannounced.  Liaise with your neighbors, and arrange with those of them who are realists to help each other if the need arises.  Keep your vehicle(s) serviced and at least half-filled with fuel, ready to leave in a hurry, and have at least 72-hour bug-out bags packed for every member of your household.
• Have spare cash on hand, as much as you can afford.  In an emergency, some vendors are likely to refuse credit cards, and/or the card charging systems might be out of service.  Cash is king!

Finally, if Minneapolis 2020 looks like it's coming to your neighborhood, be somewhere else!  Let insurance pay for repairs and replacement for any damage they do to your home and vehicles.  That's what insurance is for.

Peter