Dollar Debasement as A Matter of Policy

Michelle Mack thought she had it made.  The suburban mom was living the high life with her husband and kids in their $3 million mansion in northern San Diego County.

But that was before December 6, 2023.  This was the day police raided her home, put her in handcuffs, took her away in her PJs and slippers, and threw her in the pokey.

Now Mack’s facing 136 felony counts of grand theft, two counts of receiving stolen property, one count of conspiracy and one count of organized retail crime.  Her house, which includes a swimming pool, four-car garage and 31-acre vineyard, is listed for sale at $2.75 million.  This follows a $200,000 price cut.

Over a decade, Mack built an elaborate network of thieves, called the ‘California Girls.’  They shoplifted massive amounts of makeup from stores across America.  Mack then sold it on Amazon dot com for 50 percent off the actual retail price.  In doing so, she brought in $8 million since 2012, and nearly $2 million in 2022 alone.

“Thou shalt not steal,” commanded God to Moses at Mount Sinai. Continue reading

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Have You Bought The BRRR?

These days, individuals who, like John Locke, “love truth for truth’s sake,” are far and away in the minority.  Out of the bowels of America’s higher learning institutions comes a young populace with sullied brains and fanatical hearts.

At a hefty price tag now being piled on taxpayers, they learned not how to think; but, what to think.  And in doing so, they’ve retarded their mental abilities.

Those who skipped college to learn a trade are more readily able to discern an objective truth using basic common sense.  They weren’t subjected to an abundance of rubbish like their college educated counterparts.  This affords them the freedom to independently separate fact from fiction.

Debasement of thought goes hand in glove with the decline of the west.  In fact, with open eyes and a listening ear, one can observe that as society degrades, reality is distorted in unnatural and fallacious ways.

Over the last decade, for example, pronouns have been corrupted to authenticate non-binary gender designations.  ‘They’ is used in the singular to convey the unspecified.  The supposed social enlightenment of it all takes priority over violations of both biological fact and English grammar. Continue reading

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Ghosts of the Alexandria Hotel

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower.  Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?  For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’”

– Luke 14:28-30

Seize the Towers

The highlight of the 2024 Grammys last month was the duet by Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs of Chapman’s 1988 hit “Fast Car.”  The performers teamed up to deliver several minutes of musical magic.

The otherwise hollow affair was held at the posh Crypto.com Arena – formerly known as the Staples Center – in downtown Los Angeles.  This is one of the few places in LA that will pull the rich and famous away from their protected westside enclaves in Malibu Colony and Beverly Hills.

The exterior view from the arena’s Star Plaza entrance delivers a fabulous, Los Angeles-style aesthetic.  One that simultaneously pleases and lacerates the eye.

Beyond the foreground statues of famous LA athletes sits the Oceanwide Plaza development.  This trio of incomplete luxury towers was abandoned in 2019.  That was when the developer, Oceanwide Holdings ran out of money. Continue reading

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Day of Reckoning

“Time is money says the proverb, but turn it around and you get a precious truth.  Money is time.”

– George Gissing

Divine Disorder

Time, like money, offers a unique marker.  Something to count and compare.  Something to use for measuring progress – and failure.

What is your annual income?  How many hotdogs did Joey Chestnut eat in 10 minutes on July 4, 2021?  What is the year-to-date return of bitcoin?  What is the max MPH of a 1969 Ford Mustang at sea level?

In fact, the tick tock of time all seems so systematic, arranged, and orderly.  Almost a direct proof of deism.  Sixty seconds make a minute, 60 minutes make an hour, 24 hours make a day, and one day equals one complete rotation of the planet earth.

Roughly every 30 days the moon orbits the earth – which is one month.  Then every 12 months the earth orbits the sun – which is one year.

So far so good, right? Continue reading

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