^H

The title might be evocative of a frustrating dialog box on a screen from the past. Yes, that’s kind of the intention…

Yes, I’m awake very early on a Saturday morning. My scarred brain is going a million miles per hour the past few days. No, I haven’t had any coffee yet, and maybe that’d help settle things a bit, but I wanted to really get a move on several things.

Versus

Went to the Reason Versus debate on Thursday night. I expect they’ll put it up on Rumble or Totes-Didn’t-Used-To-Do-Evil-TV in the next few days. I supported the proposition at the outset, though I admit that I was waffling throughout. I ended up still voting in favor of the resolution because the participants’ arguments didn’t change my inclination.

Where I was getting bound up with that discussion is that there’s been so many strictures put in place that it’s nearly impossible, even if you’re here legally, to just go and make your own way. You’re going to be put into a box, and you shall not exit that box. Sure, there might be a few random people who slip past the fences, but your path is pretty much set. You are on a track that is largely set by your background and schooling, and the only deviation from that path is downwards.

*searches past writing for things about the PRO Act*

I’m almost certain I’d touched on that, but it was one of the two pieces of outrage legislation that failed in the wake of January 6th. (The other being the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would have essentially made everywhere a Democrat-dominion…exactly as Joe Biden’s Southern Senate buds intended….) The PRO Act really enforced the worst “pro Union” laws in the entire country. There would be no right-to-work states. Every business could be a “closed shop,” meaning that even if you, personally wanted to, you couldn’t deviate from the course you’d started at a very early age. If you did want to do something else, you’d need to start at square zero, and couldn’t ever hope to move to a level commiserate with your age. If I was healthy enough to change, say, to a career in the culinary arts, I wouldn’t be allowed to do that.

Trump got a lot of pushback on his desire to erect a physical wall stretching the Southern border. No, I didn’t think that was ever going to work. Biden scrapped a bunch of unused materials while allowing millions of people in.

But can those people work to build lives? Not when they can’t legally work.

Retirement/Disability

I think that this is finally moving along. I am not at all happy that it looks like I’m going to have to apply for Social Security disability. I never ever wanted to do that, honestly. Why? When I’d first looked at it when my bouts of sporadic employment began, the amount I was going to get was so tiny it wouldn’t have even paid our rent. Part of the reason I stayed in my last job as long as I did is that it looked like the private disability insurance included would have prevented me from using Social Security disability. Turns out it doesn’t, and my attorney said that the insurance company will pretty much force me to file at some point. Whatever. The estimates, now, would at least allow us to pay our rent. I don’t know how the coming haircut is going to affect things, but it’s only a chunk of what I should get with the private disability supplement.

But I think I have at least a start on the application ready to go. I know that it’s going to be declined at least once. I’ll reach out to my old Administrative Law professor to handle the appeals.

But, back to the appeal on the LTD claim, it’s underway. I think it’ll happen this year, thankfully. So I’ve been still plunking around with guitar stuff, and preparing to feed my compulsion in November. As well as travel.

I understand that nobody is reading this, but if you want to prove me wrong, email me a writing topic for November.

BARPod/Katie’s Book/Deleting Your History

Katie Herzog, one of the hosts of the Blocked and Reported podcast has written a book on how she stopped drinking using a particular method with an assist from medication.

She’s been making the rounds on various podcasts pitching the book. Here she is on with Heaton, who opened the Reason Versus event….

In preparation for the book release, she’s been scouring the Internets looking for stuff she’d written in the past that might not present her in the most-positive light. She’s been going through and asking for deletion on things she’d written, or edits. Look, cher, we know you used to work with the guy who forever redefined the name Santorum. Whatever you’ve written is there. If somebody isn’t going to buy your book because of something you barfed out years ago, so be it. Do I search for myself sometimes? Sure. But little of what I’ve put up over the years matters.

Do I plan to buy and listen to her audiobook? Yep. Do I disagree with her and Jesse’s politics? You bet. But what they’re not doing, and probably a big part of why I listen, is propose ways to throw people who don’t share their conclusions in prison.

Some of the discussion on one of the recent episodes sharing discussion with the Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em ladies, was her trying to remove things she’d written while trying to use someone else’s style.

Why is this a problem?

I was reminded of Dave Grohl talking about coming up with the drum part of Smells Like Teen Spirit. He credited The Gap band as partial inspiration. Now listen back-to-back, and not hear it. Revelation is like a bomb being dropped.

Much as I am loathe to give Chomsky credit on anything, I suspect there is something to generative grammar. Anything that’s more than a few paragraphs long will get the author’s uniqueness.

I was going to say that I don’t understand the desire to start from scratch, but that wouldn’t be true. One of the more irritating things about Twi^H^H^HX is that it’s a lot harder to completely wipe clean what you’ve put up in the past.

But at the same time, many it’s okay that you can’t easily do it.

And there’s always the possibility that someone took a screenshot.

And, now I think it’s time for some coffee….

I think I said my thing about the Charlie Kirk funeral on Saturday. I still don’t understand some people’s insistence in sticking to, at best, questionable accusations about his mortifications.

Why spend time looking at what he’s actually said? Ilhan Omar says he’s a white nationalist; must be true.

But, in the news about the shooting, Utah Governor Spencer Cox has gotten a lot of attention about his statements and actions regarding the manhunt, etc..

The Free Press ran a long interview with him.

I do appreciate his desire to exit the political sage after his term; politics shouldn’t be a vocation. He’s also a W&L Law alumnus, and I’m a little shocked that they weren’t forced to change their name during The Great Awokening.

They did get into the evaporation of community organizations. Callbacks to Bowling Alone. (If you’d like to read the Wiki bit on it, enjoy.) I have some vague memories of it being the new hotness when I was in college. Whichever prof recommended wasn’t able to officially put in the course because there hadn’t been sufficient academic review. (Yes, I was an undergrad when it was published….)

But the idea that there’s a group who’ll do important things to improve quality of life for people who are proximate.

Somebody you know needs something, you try to help them out. Someone might prioritize catering to local friends and family, perhaps at financial disadvantage, is just something that government doesn’t do.

Government doesn’t do things well. Government Doesn’t Work.

Bubuhbut, there’s a noble civil servant who’d be employed to make sure government isn’t working to fix problems!

If you want something done, you can: 1. Pickup the phone and call someone. 2. Pay for it yourself to get the problem taken care of.

This is the sort of think that Spike Cohen is trying to do with You Are The Power.

(I stumbled across this listening to him on the Lions of Liberty network. Much of the episode focuses on his recent adoption of Lutheranism)

Get things done. Don’t wait for the government to steal money from others~ Geez.

Has been a busy week trying to wrap things up a bit more tightly.

Getting disability straightened out is a royal pain. I suppose many of the groups who normally deal with this are dealing with situations different than mine, but it is, shall we say, bothersome that things don’t move more quickly. We are in a situation where things aren’t dire, unlike the past couple of times I considered this.

The one thing I did try to do to busy myself, somewhat, ended up being of questionable repute. I am addressing, but that, too, takes longer than I’d like.

So. Fall back to other things that might bring some fulfillment. I never really was interested in being a keen Federal Reserve watcher, but I think there’s a few things that play into all of it. President Trump doesn’t help matters; if he does something, for a not-insignificant portion of the population, it must be the worst thing ever.

In my last article, I wrote about the OUTRAGE about him firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

UNPRECEDENTED. INVESTORS RELY ON THIS NUMBERS! Don’t you understand? ORANGE MAN BAD!

The equities had about a four-hour panic, then things settled down.

Hmm. Maybe this isn’t the big deal CNBC would have us all believe.

But my big point in all of it was that if you’re not good at your job, you deserve to be fired. BLS showed that it really doesn’t have a handle on the numbers; the first estimate following the former director’s firing were off. Again, a small blip in the markets. Distraction, too, with the story about the marginally-qualified Fed governor who’s accused of personal mortgage irregularities. So OrangeManBad tired to have her removed.

Oh. My. Fucking. God. Tyrant!

The courts stepped in, and it looks like she’s safe for the moment. She sat on the latest meeting, and they voted to cut rates. The Trump appointee was the sole vote against, but only because he thought the cut should be bigger.

I won’t degrade drunken sailors by comparing the spending levels to their mythical exploits. It’s been worse than that certainly since 2005, but really since 9/11.

My contention from before remains true, I think. If you suck at your job, even if you’re a noble civil servant, you deserve to be fired.

---

Other stuff:

Again, I’m really disgusted by some of the Charlie Kirk reactions. I very much disagreed with him on a number of issues. Many of his Debate-Me-Bro takes didn’t hit firmly for me, but the same is true of many of his opponents’ arguments.

I’m bothered by what I’m hearing so often, where one take is true forever. Let’s not ever revisit past conclusions.

I don’t even know how to approach some of these things. Throughout history, there’s been things that have shed completely new light on FACTS. Saddam Hussein had a massive stockpile of chemical weapons. OrangeManBad was colluding with the Russians to get elected. Russia is not going to invade Ukraine, but if they do it’ll be quick, and any resistance will result in nuclear war. Pershing II missiles in northern Europe will result in nuclear annihilation. Gulf of Tonkin. The Killing Fields. Smallpox blankets. Lusitania. “Fine people on both sides.” One could go on for hours.

Many of the things that led to his pre-assassination cancellation have shown to be untrue. *cough* WPATH. *cough*

THE SCIENCE isn’t settled. It may seem cruel, but, laws and regulations establishing firm age limits on things make sense. Was seventeen-year-old me upset I couldn’t go buy cigarettes more easily? Yes. Was that a bad thing for the world? No. Was I going to kill myself if I was deprived nicotine? Probably not, though there were certainly a few times when I felt that way.

I mean, one of the biggest Gen X stars famously blew his head off; why wouldn’t I follow suit if I couldn’t have a smoke? Did I hit the all-night convenience store shortly after midnight after I’d dropped off my girlfriend? Absolutely. Were my parents okay with me killing myself? Nope.

I really didn’t know much about CK. He was born when I was in high school after all. Did I agree with many of his takes? Nope. Is it okay that someone else who had disagreements shot him? Nope.

Cato has had some good takes on it. This, for one. Absolutely no justification. None.

Very much enjoyed Thor on WTF. What the hell is going on in South America is of interest for a variety of reasons. I was familiar with Thor some when he was working with FIRE Obviously, he kind of fell off my radar as I stepped away from some of the Libertarian world for many years. This is in the news because the Navy is blowing up drug boats from Venezuela in International waters.

Um. Hmm.

Should I be more upset about this? Maybe.

Am I curious about whey he’s so upset with Reason? Yep.

---

Okay. MS brain fog is taking over despite the late-in-the-day coffee. Maybe I get to writing about The Fed and BLS Monday.

I called my Substack thingamajig “Okay With This.”

So much of the coverage this week has been related to the Charlie Kirk assassination. I really didn’t know much about him, honestly. It’s pretty clear that he was one of the inspirations for one of the South Park references earlier in the season with Cartman imploring the other kids to debate him.

Well, in modern Western societies, there are cameras everywhere. Campus security cameras showed someone sketchy-looking roaming around the part of the campus where the shot had probably come from.

He managed to slip off into woods that neighbored campus, discard the rifle he’d used, and slip off into the ether.

The photos were released.

Someone in his family recognized him.

And his retired cop dad detained him until he could be turned in.

But aren’t all cops bastards?

i don’t know what to make of this binarization of everything. It’s so difficult to explain to people that I’ve never voted for President Trump. My reasons for choosing not to do so are incredibly complex. I could explain them, but you’d have to spend some time speaking to me. Same goes as to the reasons I didn’t vote for Officer Harris.

Charlie Kirk seemed to be trying to go beyond the binary simplification, but, clearly, that really irked some people.

Obviously, my typical reaction to these sorts of conflicts is to retreat. And I’ve kind of done that on this, but I do keep notes in my head. If you’ve been offensive enough to me to land on that list, understand that you’re going to have to do a lot to convince me to ever interact with you again.

Sorry, not sorry.

But you can say nothing, and you can leave.

I’m trying to work through the news that dropped late in the day on the Friday before Labor Day.

Obviously, everybody who’s anybody, was already off to the last summer hurrah when the new dropped, so there’s not a lot written. Searching The Fine Web yielded this, which described what President Trump has been trying to do for most of the time since he retook office, but it doesn’t provide a lot of insight into what actually happened.

But it does point to the larger issue — Congress has dispatched its responsibilities to the Executive Branch, and the President is doing whatever he wants at the moment.

No, this isn’t just OrangeManBad. It started much earlier than him.

Maybe I shouldn’t have the you-broke-it-you-bought-it attitude, but what’s where I am. Am I going to be sympathetic? No, sorry. You lost my sympathy long ago.

I do kind of hope this can be used as precedent other places where Congress has dispatched things to the Administration, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

Congress hasn’t passed a regular budget since 2013 (for Fiscal Year 2014).

All they seem to be able to do is fundraise for their campaigns.

Are there things that could be done to fix that? Maybe, but all of them would require that Congress actually pass laws to set things straight. Again, I won’t be holding my breath.

Catching up on pods as usual. My last big writing part was kind of an effort to push people away from being scared of just about everything. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were several pods being scare of AI. How is one supposed to believe anything with the super-scary AI engines just being able to create whatever evidence that used to suffice.

I really did have sex with that very-attractive celebrity. LOOK! I have a video of it! Tell me that that video isn’t real; didn’t; you view it?

I think, however, this is an easily-solvable issue, legally. Insist on creation-to-presentation validation. If you have a video, unless you have geotag data on the creation, and blockchain evidence to establish chain-of-custody, it’s not real.

That already sorta exists when it comes to mages; this looks shopped.

Something to think through further.

---

What else is up? The oh-so-awesome insurance company is dragging its heels on my disability certification. The private company is taking a long time, but, in perspective, it’s going far better than it would be if I was trying to get some sort of government benefit.

Thinking about what the rest of the year is going wo look like after I start getting paid. Haven’t done much with the guitar stuff, but that’ll be on tap for tomorrow.

I’ve been following along with the outrage surrounding the DC takeover. The local news outlets have been trying to highlight “both sides” of the situation. I checked the local TV sources while I was listening to WTOP; are they searching for things to prove Orange Man Bad?

I’m seeing three basic perspectives on this:

1. Everything he does is awful, and just how awful it is can’t be understated. We’re all going to die! (This is understandable in a city where Officer Harris got well over 90% of the vote.)
2. There was a better way to do it, and it’s bad because OrangeManBad is doing it, and this other way should have been tried first
3. I may not like it, but it might work.

This story kind of hits those points. I don’t know if it’s just audience service, but they mention the Women’s March from January 2017 without any comment offensive backers. Okay, they’re bad, but nowhere nearly as bad as Trump.

I’m listening to/watching the news, and watching the local news stations, the coverage seems to be overwhelmingly-focused on position #1.

Along with the tack I’ve taken with the title of my Substack, “I’m Okay With This,” I’ve been thinking about Isaiah 41 quite a bit lately; be not afraid.

Maybe that’s influenced by too much attention to Human Progress. I’ll be the first to admit that many of the actions fall into the do-something-even-if-it’s-wrong category. The people in the second group I identified seem to fall into this camp. He’s never going to satisfy the people in Group One.

But what’s been happening, especially since the “Summer of Love,” hasn’t been working.

Logically, I understand that absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, but I have noticed a paucity of the usual crime stories since the takeover; maybe this will work?

I started writing this in the thick of the controversary over President Trump’s firing of the head of BLS statistics, but set it aside for a while. Given the media’s recent track record, maybe that’s not a bad thing.

But my ultimate conclusion is unchanged — it’s okay to get blown out if you’re not good at your job.

The colloquialism in the entry title is related to the outrage OUTRAGE President Trump used his hammer, firing someone, on the head of the BLS. The reasoning is something like “if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” I was looking for proper attribution, but it looks like there’s no real good story on it, and it’s something that popped up in the 60s and 70s.

Why might I be looking for the line? President Trump’s catchphrase from his time at The Apprentice is “you’re fired.”

Recently, he did this to the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Some of the things I sample made a really big deal about the repeated employment restatements under the Biden Administration.

The employment numbers are one of the many factors used by the Federal Reserve calculating core interest rates.

Some. of the restatements under Biden were remarkable. The one in early 2023 comes immediately to mind.

Fre^H^H^HChris Cuomo did have a rather-decent take on this on his NewsNation show. (If I’m watching somewhat-regularly, I can joke, okay? Also, what happened to the bird?)

My ribbing is good-natured; as I said, I watch. He got fired for not being good at CNN. This is the way things are supposed to work. People seem to forget that. This is especially true for politicians and union members.

Yes, there’s something generational at work, too. I can remember my dad making jokes about how he lost his job when he was on terminal leave from the Army. While the retirement might have seemed premature to some, it was time for him. The Army continued on without him.

Back to the topic, if I was conspiratorial, I’d look at previous BLS revisions; how close are they to an election. But I’m not that conspiratorial about it.

I was inclined to accept the originally-reported outrage I saw over at Racket News. Don’t I understand that people make their livings analyzing those numbers before anyone else can?

Noted. But when the numbers completely off over and over again, why is it an outrage that someone gets fired?

Outrage actualities won’t fix the problems. Yes, the BLS head is a government employee, but if you fail “bigly” at your job, you should be fired. It doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person, regardless of what the MSNBC analyst might imply. Or what the union rep might say.

Bubuhbut, people rely on those numbers. Whatever. Run your own. If they line up, you can attribute your story to both official sources, and my agency’s sources.

(_{I think interest rates are artificially-low, and have been since the Clinton Administration. Rate cuts have been used as a king of economic panacea for the past quarter-century. What largely fed the late-90s/early-2000s balanced budgets were tax increases passed by President Bush and the Democratic Congress. Lips read and ignored.})

I think there might be something that ties in with polling. I wrote in one of the discussion threads on WTF‘s chat,

“2024 Iowa was an example, I suppose, but how much attention did it get?

I had to STFW for Ann Seltzer’s name.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/17/ann-selzer-retirement-iowa-poll-0019003

But for a government employee, there’d be a union rep who’d have the name at the ready.”

Anyone who’s worked in the private sector after the fall of the wall just yawns.

(Side note: I did run this through an AI tool for review. It found a couple of typos; unsurprising. But it did catch a few things that were typed-correctly, but confusingly-worded. When I have some spare cash, I will probably purchase that company’s product. No, it’s not ChatGPT…)

Even though there’s no space shuttle, now.

Whoever’s writing The Drudge Report had this as one of the top stories.

There’s something The Experts seem to always forget — it’s not 1987. Things that were difficult and expensive in 1987 are now basically instant and free-of-charge.

I remember heading into the stairwell of the quarters where we lived during that time to fetch our copy of The Stars and Stripes. One of the pages covered the exchange rates. AFN would also have the daily exchange rates at the end of its newscasts. If you were travelling among the countries within NATO, you needed to carry the local countries’ currency with you. You could easily find yourself in countries with three different currencies within an hour’s drive.

Going to Bastogne to tour the Battle of the Bulge battlefields? Neat! Make sure you have Belgian and Luxembourg Francs. If you’re getting there through France, you’ll want some French Francs. If you’re coming in through The Netherlands, make sure you’ve got some Guilder. (Traveler’s tip, too — the 5NLG coin was exactly the same size as a 5DM coin….and that’ll help save you on a pack of cigarettes from the fence-top machines when you get back to Germany)

But back to whatever interest rate is being paid on the US Dollar — it doesn’t matter very much today. Don’t like what the US is paying, and you’re worried that the dollar isn’t correctly-valued? Move to another currency. It’ll take a few minutes, and if the difference in return might make up for whatever costs you’ve paid to do the conversion almost immediately.

So go to EUR. CDN. DOGE. It really doesn’t matter what a central bank does. If your wealth is spread among many asset classes around the world, whatever the Federal Reserve does isn’t going to take everything.

_{(Am I disturbed by what pretty much every western government has done for the last quarter-century? Absolutely. But it’s not just the US Federal Reserve.)}