Maggie's Farm

I don't support vandalizing anything, or anyone's property.  But in this case, it's hard to deny that Nancy didn't somehow get what she deserved.  Pelosi's apologist position, promotion of leftist causes, and general lack of interest in pushing back against the extremes of her own misguided ideology have repercussions, and if there is anything which is true in life, it's that leftists eat their own faster than they destroy their enemies.  

Maybe I'm jumping the gun, but 'Cancel Rent' and 'We Want Everything' (presumed to be about stimulus checks, though I think it is more than that), are not what I'd expect to see from right-wing protests.  I'm sure the media will spin it that way, somehow, because the Left is never dangerous or wrong when modern media analysis is engaged.

It's too bad she didn't see this coming.  But I did believe a Biden win would embolden the Left to become more aggressive and violent, and that still seems to be true.

I'm sorry Nancy has to learn the hard way.  Destroying property is always wrong.  But she's done her fair share of damaging property throughout her tenure...but has done it 'legally'. 

All our lives have been impacted.  All our lives have changed.  

Some more than others.  But the most annoying and problematic part is economically.  The US was a nation of small businesses.  It may be again, but not nearly to the degree we were prior to Covid.  The main outcome of the lockdowns and distancing is that larger firms have benefited.

When this started, and people commented how lockdowns would kill businesses (and, as I pointed out, hurt landlords and even renters, depending on legislation in your given state or locality), I read mocking articles, and heard statements from pundits which put forth a concept: "Isn't Capitalism about entrepreneurship, ingenuity and risk-taking?  Won't these all come back, what are you worried about?"  These were designed to taunt believers in Capitalism and push a misleading agenda of Leftist/Progressive economic thought.

I literally read all the comments, which came to 76 (not counting my own, and a few other, comments which were not specifically about work).

Everyone had very different specific circumstances and jobs, or 'jobs' as the case may be, but what interested me is that few seemed to be mentioned in a grudging or unsatisfied/disappointed manner.  My own comment to Mrs. Bulldog was that I remember my first job fondly because of the odd circumstances which led to me getting it, but also because I remember little else about that summer, and the work itself only lasted the month of August.  But we had our own room at the resort if we wanted to spend the night, and we could use the pool as long as we didn't annoy guests and were respectful. 

It was also the first summer where I really learned about music and girls, which had previously never been primary interests.  Girls and music do seem to go together pretty well.  The girls at the resort were impressed that we had money, and that we worked.  The parents still couldn't know we were interested in them, though.

Commenters mentioned roofing (something I did on a few holidays), picking fruit or vegetables (which I had to do in my mom's garden), babysitting (which I did, too), paper routes, flipping burgers, and a variety of other things which I have less experience in.

It's my view that if people let their work define them, it becomes a limiting factor.  If our work is just part of who we are, we control our outcomes.  We can choose to be what we want and who we want.  I see a lot of that in our comments.  We've all done many things and each seems to have mostly good memories of what has been done. I can only think that the young people today who complain, protest and make demands simply have not worked hard enough to know that you're happier when you produce rather than when you demand things. 

Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?  My son says no.  I say yes.  My brother says yes, the director John McTiernan says yes, and a host of others say no.

Others play Solomon and split the baby.  It's not a movie with a Christmas theme, but does include the element of Christmas.  So, "no, but..."

Another way of looking at this is to ask if there was a message regarding "the system" in Die Hard.  It was based on a book which was clearly anti-capitalist in nature, and McTiernan states it was supposed to be anti-capitalist.  Frankly, I think he lost on that score.  The proletarian nods don't really add up well.  Capitalism had been so successful in providing more for all that by the time the movie was made some of the items he felt delineated 'wealth and privilege' from 'working class' were no longer meaningful.  They are even less so today (assuming our economy had not been locked down, which has only exacerbated some of the divisions of wealth which were barely noticeable before). 

That said, the most noticiable delineations of class today are not wealth-related, but power related as our "leaders" lock us down and lecture us on how to behave, only to go do the exact opposite things which they suggest we do.  The real 'class warfare' today is power vs. the lack of it, not whether one has more money than someone else.  Of course, that was always the nature of 'class warfare', but Leftists love to obscure that fact with a veneer of basic economic BS that only people with common sense can see through.  McTiernan, therefore, fails miserably in his goal of making a legitimate anti-capitalist story.  Mainly because there is no legitimate anti-capitalist story to be made.  Unless you are a "trained Marxist" and know how to create one out of whole cloth.  (For what it's worth, the term "trained Marxist" always made me laugh.  I studied Economics at The New School, which tried very hard to push the Marxist agenda, and I read quite a bit of Marx, Hobsbawm, Gordon and a host of other Marxist garbage.  So I'm a "trained Marxist" and one of the things every single Marxist professor said was "Marx left no blueprint, only an idea with no path forward and no clear goal except revolution." That's why Marxism and Leftist thought is such utter BS.  Unlike Classical, Neo-Classical, Monetarist or even Austrian schools of thought, Marxism is just an idea and not a fully-formed one, but full of childish and misleading binary concepts.  Though I will credit Marx with completely shifting the study of History in a very meaningful and useful fashion.)

At any rate, to me Die Hard is very much a Christmas movie and very much a pro-capitalist one.  After all, Hans Gruber himself, like so many Marxists before him, only cared about the power he was managing (his gang) and the money he was trying to collect, and was utilizing a facade to perpetrate his crime...you know, like BLM and Antifa today.  These movements are cargo cults, full of images that seem to 'make sense' but cannot ever effectively achieve the goals they have set for themselves because they are inclined only toward one thing.  Perpetual Revolution.

Friends of mine have barraged me with commentary on the "disaster" that Florida is, particularly with regard to Covid.  Anecdotally, I was told urban (and this seems to confirm) ICUs typically range from 55-80% full at any given time, depending on seasonality.  The current occupancy rates, in some places, are in the 90s, so while that is very high, it's worth noting ICUs are usually very full.  The real concern is the ability to expand, as needed.  I believe, based on the response in April, this is something our system can handle fairly effectively.  I'm not being too relaxed or naive.  I'm not diminishing or putting down the efforts of our medical personnel.  I am applauding them for their efforts, their hours, their professionalism, and creativity as they have found many solutions and treatments along the way to help mitigate and ease many of these issues.  That is the beauty of not only our medical system, but our overall economic system.  Flexibility and ingenuity.

Our friend the Manhattan Contrarian has presented his excellent piece on why Florida has made New York look silly and misguided in the midst of all this.

I doubt the media will present the story as MC has.  I applaud our friend MC for presenting the facts.  After all, he lives near the center of the echo chamber.

I'll toss in one more point of comparison - New Jersey, which like NY has similar governance, though a much smaller population (8.9mm) than Florida (21.5mm) and New York (19.5mm).  Covid cases have reached 440k in NJ, about in line with where Florida is as a percentage, but it has almost 19k deaths - similar to Florida (older and with a larger population).  Comparatively speaking, New York City alone has roughly the same population as New Jersey, but has had roughly the same number of cases as New Jersday (390k) and more deaths (24k).

"Follow the science" is a real thing, but not the way Progressives present it.  For them, it's really "Follow the politics, which pretends to be science."

It's getting worse.
California, intent on driving its residents into utter poverty, has sped up its attack on the wealthy.
There was a time when people headed there to make their fortune, and many did.  California was, for many years, the image of 'the future'.  Even with the recent tech boom and Silicon Valley, there was a resurgence of its forward-thinking vision.

Over the years, California has proved itself incapable of managing such basic things as water or even electricity.  The misguided desires to centrally plan everything, and overtax people to do it, will kill the state.  This is a given.  

California has succumbed to politicians' worst instincts and is not only taxing people to death, but chasing business away, and enforcing social ideas that are (to put it mildly) out of touch with humanity and reality.  It should not be surprising that so many people are leaving for places like Texas, Montana or several other states which are outside the deep blue Progressive belt of shame.

Cali, which I used to visit regularly for business, is nice.  I'd consider living there...at one point in time.  Not so much now.