In an internet age such moves have a definite disadvantage because while the MSM will always cover for grift from the left that supports their narrative there are too many outlets that can expose it and despite the advantages of having the tech giants on their side you can’t completely shut out or shut up everyone, which is why such days are important as a disincentive for those who would follow that path.
But of more significance to me personally is this.
In my daily prayers I daily offer the 4th Glorious Mystery of my 1st Rosary for “Stacy’s women” which I define as the various women feminists, cranks, crazy people etc that Stacy McCain brings to our attention on his blog.
I suspect few of these people are subject of anyone’s prayers and while we rightly call out behavior that might be outrageous dishonorable or both we must not neglect to call upon God’s mercy for such people always remembering that if we had encountered Saul of Tarsus, Matthew the Tax Collector or Mary Magdalene on the day before they were touched by Christ we might be inclined to have an “Everybody blog about Saul of Tarsus” day.
Never doubt the infinite mercy of God, nor that each of us need it ourselves and should never begrudge it for others.
During the early part of 2020, when COVID restrictions were in full swing and everything fun had to arrive in an UberEats or Amazon delivery vehicle, I built a pirate ship. A big, frickin’ pirate ship. Like, adult sized, complete with cup holders for your adult beverages. Home Depot had a massive truck drop off all the lumber, and every weekend until the beginning of summer, there I was, building away on the ship. Luckily, as the summer and COVID dragged on, my kids had something to play on while the city shut down all the other playgrounds.
The lumber I purchased was fairly hefty: 4×4 posts, 5/4 decking board, 2×6 framing, and all of it is pressure treated. Recently I went to add a simple enclosure for my garden, and looked at the price for some 4x4s. And man, did they look expensive. Curious, I pulled up my receipts from the pirate ship project. And sure enough….4x4s had nearly doubled in price.
If 4×4 was a stock, it would have beat an awful lot of the market. I also looked at our Walmart receipts, and sure enough, food prices bumped up a bit too. Gas is more expensive as well.
So I’m super skeptical when I get told we have little to no inflation. In real prices, I don’t see it. Everything is more expensive, and a lot more than the 2% you would normally expect. Maybe that makes me dumber than an economist, but I’ll take my actual experience of buying things over some book knowledge that seems to have no place in reality. Given how high these prices really are, I’m worried that inflation is going to skyrocket once people start buying things again in large numbers. If ever there was a time to worry about inflation, now would be that time.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.
Boycotts and deplatforming seem to be all the rage in 2021. Won’t stand for the National Anthem? People will vote with their remote controls and watch something else. Don’t like someone’s opinion? Easy, just demonetize their videos, like what YouTube is doing to PragerU right now. It’s easy to sit back and watch this as a passive observer when you don’t really care about ESPN or make YouTube videos.
But when your bank cancels your account, or you can’t use a credit card, it makes that passive stance no longer tenable. You might not care about ESPN, but not being able to purchase gasoline with a credit card becomes a regular nightmare. Worse still, what if no major bank will carry your money? Almost all employers pay employees electronically. What would you do?
If that sounds far fetched, its not. Bank accounts associated with conservative groups like the NRA have been under pressure to get canceled. Mastercard and Visa, the biggest names in credit cards, stopped donations to the David Horowitz Freedom Center (although they eventually restored it). Attacking financials hits home for everyone, because you can’t boycott banks, and that makes them a juicy target for radical liberals wanting to hurt conservatives.
While we should all be standing up and fighting these efforts, we should also protect ourselves. If you own a business that risks cancellation, you should be accepting cryptocurrency as a form of payment. Cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin or Ethereum, is a disaggregated ledger system where individual nodes on a network verify accurate transactions, and pay for that with a coin. If it sounds confusing, it is, however, so is trying to understand how banks process your money electronically. A good Bitcoin primer is this video from 99 BitCoins:
More importantly, Bitcoin and other blockchain cryptocurrencies have now been around for a while. Most of the bugs are worked out, and major companies are accepting them as payment. Tesla is the most notable, but add AT&T and even Burger King (only in Venezuela) to that list. Its growing and its not going away.
For conservatives, cryptocurrency offers the ability to pay people in a peer-to-peer mode that nobody can cancel. No government can freeze your account. No financial institution can be bullied into canceling you. Even better, the money transfers between crypto wallets (think of them nominally as the account that holds your cryptocurrency) only lists account numbers. This makes it incredibly difficult to track down or dox people that are frequenting a business or donating to conservative candidates.
Speaking of donating, since we’ve seen a fair amount of doxxing of people who donate to PACs, Political Action Committees can accept cryptocurrency, and its happening more frequently. Conservatives that think they shouldn’t get hassled about legal donations should consider telling their candidates to take cryptocurrency. Most PACs right now immediately cash the cryptocurrency into US Dollars and report it, which is fine, and it still maintains a decent level of anonymity for the donor.
Now is the time to get started. I recommend all conservatives learn about cryptocurrency, get a cryptocurrency wallet, and purchase some common cryptocurrency (Bitcoin and Ethereum are good candidates due to their popularity). For individuals, you should get an account that allows easy bank transfers, such as Coinbase, which doesn’t charge for ACH transfers. Even better, Coinbase has a series of short videos that teach you about different cryptocurrency and pay you in small amount of crypto to help you get started. If you use this link, it also helps me out.
For businesses, Coinbase offers a commerce site, https://commerce.coinbase.com/. The site generates a separate commerce wallet for common cryptocurrency and makes transferring to your commercial bank account easy. Even better, if your bank tries to cancel you, you can hold your money in cryptocurrency until you setup at a different bank.
Cryptocurrency is going to be the conservative answer to financial cancel culture. Now is the time to start, so that when the times get bad, you’re one step ahead of the liberal juggernaut.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.
I’ve been enjoying my time away from Facebook, with the biggest benefit being more time to do things that really matter. I’ve hung out with more actual friends, gotten more work done on the house, and read more actual news and a lot less opinions.
I am still on MeWe and Nextdoor, and Nextdoor supplies me with any additional drama I may need. A few days ago, this gem popped into my feed
Overseer? Rid of crime? Whoa…what’s going on here!
So, for starters, this person lives in a crappy part of town. Nextdoor lists your neighborhoods, so I looked it up…and that neighborhood sucks. It’s not Chicago level, but its not a nice place. On a scale of “let my kids play in front yard” to “requires military escort to visit 7-11,” I’d give it a “keep a knife in your car for protection” level of safety. Basically, the person posting it isn’t off the mark about safety.
Now, when you read the word “overseer,” most people reading this blog probably sucked in their breath. I know I did. But I kept reading.
“Rid of crime?” I personally think that’s why we have police officers, but I don’t disagree with the sentiment
Streets are clean. Not disagreeing here.
Helping people repair homes. Sounds like charity work. I’ve helped my neighbors clean up, and they’ve helped me.
Make sure everyone is safe. Define “safe.” If its a neighborhood watch sort of thing…ok.
Make sure everyone has food. I donate to the local food pantry, so again, not opposed.
The more I read it, the more I realized I’m not in total opposition to this person. As you can see from the comments, plenty of people paused on the “overseer” word. Given that there are plenty of grammatical errors in the post, I would say this person doesn’t have a great grasp of English. Is it possible that this person made a poor word choice? I think so.
Even better, what if I made some tweaks. Let’s say the post looked like this:
OK, so I had some fun at the end with Karen and CNN. But if someone posted about starting a militia, most of the readers here (including me) would be OK with it. And if we also helped our actual neighbors, again, most would be fine. If we did a food drive, or a repair homes drive, or walked the streets at night to provide presence and deter criminals, again, most people reading this are probably OK with that.
I don’t blame people for jumping on the word “overseer,” but anymore social media has made people so quick to judge others that we’re missing opportunities to connect with real people. If you want to jump on every comment from Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi, I don’t blame you, because they don’t have good intentions. But your local neighbor is not Nancy Pelosi (hopefully not anyway). Maybe, just maybe, instead of instantly lashing out against the person, asking for some clarification might be in order.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.
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